[marxmail] Famed Pacific island's population 'crash' debunked by ancient DNA

[Richard Fidler]

A study of ancient genomes has dispelled the theory that early inhabitants
of Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island) ravaged its ecosystem and caused
the population to crash
 . Researchers analysed the DNA of ancient and
modern Rapanui individuals and found no sign of a ‘population bottleneck’
that would have indicated a collapse. This study, done with the endorsement
of and input from officials and Indigenous community members in Rapa Nui,
“serves as the final nail in the coffin of this collapse narrative”, says
archaeogeneticist Kathrin Nägele.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02962-w?utm_source=Live+Audience

&utm_campaign=eb06914b76-nature-briefing-daily-20240912&utm_medium=email&utm
_term=0_b27a691814-eb06914b76-51313280

 



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Re: [marxmail] Lenin on Serbia's Role in World War I: A useful Analogy for the current Ukraine War?

[Richard Fidler]

The current issue of L
 ’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of France’s Nouveau parti
anticapitaliste, has a two-page feature on the resistance to fascist
occupation in WWII, and the role of the French Trotskyists. The author,
Laurent Ripart, mentions that Trotsky, writing in June 1940 after the German
victory, explained that “France is becoming transformed into an oppressed
nation,” adding that “Of all the forms of dictatorship, the totalitarian
dictatorship of a foreign conqueror is the most intolerable.” Trotsky’s text
is here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/06/course.htm. 

The French Marxist historian Pierre Broué, in an article entitled “How
Trotsky and the Trotskyists confronted the Second World War
 ,” refers to the concept of revolutionary defeatism (without naming it as
such) and notes that “Trotsky was no longer prepared merely to pose the
revolution as the means to escape the war.” He developed what he regarded as
“a difference of development, quantitative and qualitative, between the
policies of revolutionaries in the First and Second World Wars,” says Broué.
He quotes Trotsky:

During the last war, not only the proletariat as a whole, but also its
vanguard, and, in a certain sense, the vanguard of the vanguard, were caught
unawares. The elaboration of the principles of revolutionary policy towards
the war began at a time when the war was already in full blaze and when the
military machine exercised unlimited rule. [5]

During the First World War the perspective of revolution seemed remote even
to Lenin. He wrote that only future generations would see it. Trotsky
recalled:

Prior to the February Revolution and even afterwards, the revolutionary
elements felt themselves to be not so much contenders for power as the
extreme left opposition. [6]

Therefore, the struggle for the independence of the proletariat, the
rejection of ‘civil peace’, and the necessity for the class struggle of the
proletariat, were the primary tasks in 1914-18, as defensive measures:

The attention of the revolutionary wing was centred on the question of the
defence of the fatherland. The revolutionaries naturally replied in the
negative to this question. This was entirely correct. This purely negative
reply served as the basis for propaganda and for training the cadres. But it
could not win the masses, who did not want a foreign conqueror. [7]

Trotsky recalled that the Bolsheviks succeeded in Russia in winning the
proletariat and the majority of the people, in the space of eight months,
and that this success was not in response to a negative refusal to defend
the bourgeois fatherland, but to the aspirations of the masses, to which the
Bolsheviks knew how to give positive answers:

The decisive rôle in this conquest was played, not by the refusal to defend
the bourgeois fatherland, but by the slogan “All power to the soviets”. And
only by this revolutionary slogan! The criticism of imperialism and of its
militarism, like the renunciation of defence of bourgeois democracy and so
on, could never have won the overwhelming majority of the people to the side
of the Bolsheviks. [8]

Elsewhere in his essay, Broué notes that in 1940 “the French Trotskyists
were divided into two tendencies over perspectives which were ultimately as
far away from each other as they both were from that of Trotsky. Beginning
from the conception that the defeat of French imperialism and the occupation
of French territory were leading, not only to national oppression, but to
the rebirth of a genuine ‘national question’ in which all classes were
interested, as in a colonial country, the majority of the POI, organised
around the committees which published La Verité, outlined a strategy
according to which the bourgeoisie of an occupied country becomes the
natural ally of the workers’ movement, and the latter devotes itself
completely to “national resistance”. Conversely, the La Seule Voie (The Only
Road) group, which had emerged from the PCI, and subsequently became the
CCI, denied that an imperialist nation could ever become an oppressed nation
following a military defeat, and considered that national demands were “the
importation of bourgeois ideology into the proletariat in order to
demoralise it”.

“These two positions, remote from each other, were both in a way the result
of isolation,” writes Broué. “Under the pressure of the European Secretariat
[of the Fourth International], they were gradually abandoned.” But the
participation by the revolutionary Marxists in the French Resistance was
limited by their disperson and persecution but also by the support to De
Gaulle and his English allies on the part of the dominant Stalinists in much
of the organized Resistance.

Many of these contradictions are excellently portrayed in the popular French
TV narrative “Un Village Français” 

[marxmail] Unify the political left without sidestepping the necessary debates!

[Richard Fidler]

 Bernard Rioux reflects on his five decades on Quebec’s radical left

 A leading Québécois activist and editor, Bernard Rioux was interviewed by
<https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2021/02/against-tide-andre-frappiers-journe
y-as.html> André Frappier in a recent issue of
<https://www.cahiersdusocialisme.org/> Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme. My
translation is followed by links to a key article by Bernard also available
in English. Footnotes are by NCS unless initialled by me. – Richard Fidler

* * *

Bernard Rioux is well known as the editor of
<https://www.pressegauche.org/> Presse-toi à gauche! But his activist
journey began more than 50 years ago. We asked him to talk to us about his
experience in all these years of activism in the Quebec left. This is not
only a personal assessment, but also the assessment of an activist
generation.

 

Full:
https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2024/08/unify-political-left-without_3.html

 

 



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Re: [marxmail] Lenin on Serbia's Role in World War I: A useful Analogy for the current Ukraine War?

[Richard Fidler]

I agree with Michael Pröbsting
  that Lenin’s discussion on
the Serbian national liberation struggle in WWI can provide us with some
useful pointers in developing a revolutionary Marxist approach to Ukraine’s
struggle against Russian aggression, occupation, and annexation. However,
unlike Michael, I do not base my support of Ukraine’s resistance on what he
terms Ukraine’s “semicolonial” character. My reading of Lenin’s analysis in
WWI goes much deeper. In fact, Lenin and most of the Zimmerwald Left
defended the national sovereignty of several European nations subject to
foreign occupation and annexation – including even imperialist Belgium,
occupied by German imperialism. And I think it can be argued that Lenin’s
initial response to Serbia’s resistance to Austo-Hungarian oppression
evolved in the debates among the Zimmerwald Left. In any case, here is what
I published on the national question in WWI,  not long ago: Support Ukraine?
 –
Why and How. I think it stands up well in light of the differences in
today’s left forces over the Russian-Ukraine war.

Also worth consulting is Hal Draper’s essay: The Myth of Lenin
 ’s
“Revolutionary Defeatism”.

 

Richard



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[marxmail] Trudeau's failure in Venezuela

[Richard Fidler]

https://yvesengler.com/2024/07/29/trudeaus-failure-in-venezuela/



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[marxmail] Britain's Right Is Following a Canadian Playbook

[Richard Fidler]

Labour won, but Farage's Reform credits Preston Manning's 'huge' guidance
for its plans to take over the wounded Conservative Party.

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2024/07/08/Britain-Right-Following-Canadian-Playb
ook/?utm_source=daily

&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=080724

 



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[marxmail] Britain - After the Landslide: Resistance and Realignment

[Richard Fidler]

Anti*Capitalist Resistance statement on the General Election: Tories
annihilated, Labour have a 'loveless' landslide, and hard-right Farage
surges. There is a challenge from the left and on Gaza: organise the
resistance now.

https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article8583

 



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[marxmail] Jeremy Corbyn wins Islington North as independent

[Richard Fidler]

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/07/05/jeremy-corbyn-wins-islington-north-as
-independent-labour-secures-victory-in-general-election/

 



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[marxmail] Ukraine 'peace summit' falters amidst growing international disunity

[Richard Fidler]

Russian and Ukrainian socialists issue joint appeal for solidarity, social
and ecological reconstruction of Ukraine

 A peace conference initiated by Ukraine and hosted by Switzerland met June
15-16 with the participation of 57 heads of state and government, including
Canada. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had hoped the meeting would
rally support for
 his 10-point
peace plan released in October 2022, six months after the outset of Russia’s
full-scale armed invasion of Ukraine and its subsequent occupation and
annexation of about 20 percent of the country. However, the
 joint communiqué issued at its conclusion
expressed “a common vision” on only three aspects: nuclear safety, global
food security, and complete exchange of all prisoners of war and return to
Ukraine of all Ukrainian civilians, including children, unlawfully detained
or displaced by Russia.

The adopted text reiterated support for UN resolutions
 [1] affirming “the
principles of sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of all
states, including Ukraine, within their internationally recognized borders,
including territorial waters, and the resolution of disputes through
peaceful means as principles of international law.” However, it failed to
commit the participating governments to any substantial program of economic
reconstruction assistance to Ukraine, let alone cancellation of its enormous
international public debt. Moreover, several countries from the expanded
BRICS alliance – led by
 Brazil, India, and South Africa – abstained.
China refused to attend the conference and Russia, of course, was not
invited.

Russian president Vladimir Putin sought to refocus international attention
on Russia’s absence from the summit through a statement June 14 reaffirming
Russia’s supposed “willingness to negotiate” -- on terms tantamount to
Ukraine’s capitulation. And Zelensky alleged that China had sought to
persuade some countries not to attend. Such is “multipolarity” in today’s
global context.

Socialists in Ukraine, Russia and Switzerland sought to supplement the
ambitions of the official peace conference from an alternative
internationalist perspective based on solidarity and oriented toward a
radical social and ecological transformation in Europe as a whole. They
drafted a joint declaration in support of Ukrainian self-determination and
in favour of the democratic overthrow of the Putin regime. The declaration,
with its 12 principles for a just peace in Ukraine, is reproduced below. As
its authors indicated, its purpose is to “stimulate comprehensive
discussions on national self-determination, inter-imperialist rivalry,
geopolitical bloc thinking, rearmament, anti-imperialist and ecosocialist
strategies and in general emancipatory working-class mobilizations,
particularly with progressive social movements such as the feminist
movement, the environmental movement, migration solidarity and trade
unions.”

They started this discussion with an online conference on June 15, at which
speakers from the launching organizations presented the major content and
goal of the declaration and suggested ideas for further political discussion
and collaboration. A dominant theme of this discussion, which I attended,
was the need for the international Left to develop a comprehensive
alternative ecosocialist strategy to capitalist multipolarity and
imperialist rivalry. More than one participant noted the importance of the
agreement just reached by France’s left parties, hastily assembled as a “New
Popular Front,” to contest the snap legislative elections called by Macron
around a
 program
that included as a “common denominator” the pledge to “defend steadfastly
Ukrainian sovereignty through the delivery of needed weapons.”

Full:
https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2024/06/ukraine-peace-summit-falters-amidst.
html

 

 



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[marxmail] FW: TMU students' pro-Palestine statement held to be not contrary to school's code of conduct

[Richard Fidler]

A feature article in The Globe and Mail on June 15 (paywalled, below is full
text) reported on the public controversy over a student pro-Palestine “open
letter” and its ramifications. “Corporate law reporter” Robyn Doolittle
casts her report in the framework of determining “the line between hate
speech and free speech – and who gets to decide?” But as it reveals, at
bottom the conflict was one between fundamentally opposing political
perspectives, as confirmed by the findings of the judge assigned by Toronto
Metropolitan University to conduct an external review of whether the student
letter breached the university’s code of conduct. His conclusion: “The
letter may be troubling and offensive to many, but it was not antisemitic.
He noted that students had intended to criticize Israel, not Jewish people.
He concluded the comments were protected under the university’s Statement on
Freedom of Speech, which provides students with wide latitude to explore
ideas.” A major victory for the students, and for Palestine. – Richard  

Here
 ’s the external review by Justice
MacDonald

 

How a student petition on Gaza tore through Lincoln Alexander Law School and
the wider legal world

 

When war erupted in Gaza, some TMU law students signed an incendiary
statement about who was to blame. Then came the backlash – and an
existential crisis about their school’s mission

The Globe and Mail (Ottawa/Quebec Edition)15 Jun 2024

ROBYN DOOLITTLE CORPORATE LAW REPORTER

 

When a new law school in Toronto opened its doors in September, 2020, its
brochure promised an unapologetically “progressive” legal education. Ryerson
Law, as it was then called, embraced diversity, equity and inclusion.
Technology would be central. The curriculum included professional
placements, so students would graduate ready to be working lawyers. At its
core, this new school – soon to be renamed the Lincoln Alexander School of
Law at Toronto Metropolitan University – promised to change the status quo.

 

“We are ready to engage with the most challenging legal issues of our time,”
dean Donna Young, the only Black woman leading one of Canada’s 24 law
schools, said at the launch ceremony.

 

Three years later, those tenets were put to the test with the Oct. 7 Hamas
attack on Israel, during which about 1,200 people were killed and some 250
taken hostage. Amidst the immediate outpouring of international support for
Israel, student activists at Lincoln Alexander worried that a history of
Palestinian suffering was being overlooked.

 

Given the school’s founding principles, they urged their administration to
speak out – and break with the conventional wisdom that universities should
keep quiet on political matters. Similar demands were being made at
universities across Canada and the United States. Lincoln Alexander refused,
and as the days went by, tensions grew on campus.

 

On Friday, Oct. 20, the students sent the dean a petition calling on Lincoln
Alexander to drop its “neutral” position.

 

The letter writers declared that “‘Israel’ is not a country,” but a colonial
and genocidal state. They characterized the events of Oct. 7 as a war crime,
but also expressed support for “all forms of Palestinian resistance.” They
argued that the Hamas attack was a direct result of “Israel’s 75-year-long
systemic campaign to eradicate Palestinians.”

 

Altogether, 73 students and one alum signed – a sixth of the law school.
More than half had used an anonymous moniker such as “Student in
Solidarity,” but 36 signed with their full names.

 

By Sunday – 48 hours after its creation – screenshots of the petition had
gone viral on social media, inciting waves of vitriol against Lincoln
Alexander and its students. Signatories were doxxed and told they would
never get jobs.

 

“I certainly wouldn’t hire any of these students and the fact some choose to
‘show’ their solidarity by keeping their name hidden means I’d have to write
off hiring anyone from years 1-3 from the current crop at @LincAlexLawTMU,”
Toronto lawyer Jeff Hershberg tweeted that night.

 

In the days that followed, the story made national headlines. Donors dropped
funding. Law firms that offered student placements withdrew from the
program. And the school’s dean and TMU’s president were inundated with irate
messages accusing TMU of enabling antisemitism.

 

Among the students, those who weren’t involved were furious that their
degree and job prospects might be tainted. Some Jewish students felt
ostracized. The signatories believed their administration had abandoned them
to online harassment.

 

Over the last two months, The Globe and Mail has interviewed dozens of
people connected to the controversy – faculty and staff, prominent lawyers
and law firm leaders, spurned donors and students on all sides of the issue.
Hundreds of documents have been reviewed, including internal TMU e-mails

[marxmail] Ukraine peace conference

[Richard Fidler]

The Swiss government is organizing an international peace conference near 
Lucerne this weekend June 15-16. As I noted in an earlier post to this list, 
Ukraine will probably be pressured to make serious concessions that conflict 
with Zelensky’s 10-point “peace formula” based on the demand for full 
withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine and an immediate end to its aggression. 

https://www.eurointegration.com.ua/eng/articles/2024/06/5/7187503/

 

As a counter-action, the following declaration was launched jointly by 
Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) in Ukraine, Posle Media Collective in Russia, 
Bewegung für den Sozialismus / Mouvement pour le Socialisme and solidaritéS – 
mouvement anticapitaliste, féministe, écosocialiste in Switzerland, 
emanzipation – Zeitschrift für ökosozialistische Strategie (DE, AT, CH): 

https://emanzipation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024_06_11_Ukraine_peace_conference_letter_declaration_endorsements.pdf

 

Supporters of the declaration are invited to an online meeting to be held 15 
June, 18.00-20.00 CET, 12 noon NYC and Toronto) via Zoom ‘Ukraine: A People's 
Peace, not an Imperial Peace. How to achieve peace realising 
self-determination, democratic rights, and socio-ecological transformation?‘

 

Presentation of the joint declaration and discussion on common perspectives 
with:

•  Denis Pilash, Political scientist, University of Kyiv, Co-editor 
of journal Сommons, Sotsialnyi Rukh

•  Hanna Perekhoda, Historian, Lausanne, solidariéS and Sotsialnyi 
Rukh

•  Vlad Siiutkin, Public Sociology Laboratory (PS Lab, ex-Russian 
Socialist Movement)

•  Jann Wojcik, (Mouvement for Socialism - BFS/MPS Switzerland)

•  Christian Zeller, (emanzipation - Zeitschrift für 
ökosozialistische Strategie)

 

Registration is required for participation:

https://tinyurl.com/39xsr5f6

 

Richard Fidler

 



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[marxmail] Swiss Peace Summit could end up harming Ukraine as nothing is going to plan

[Richard Fidler]

All usual international issues have become minor for Ukrainian diplomacy in
recent weeks or even months. All efforts of the Ukrainian government and the
embassies are focused on the Peace Summit in Switzerland – the first meeting
of leaders aimed at establishing the Ukrainian vision of a just peace and
ways to end the Russian aggression.  [The Swiss government will organise an
international peace conference near Lucerne on 15/16 June.]

 

A week is left until the summit, but everything is going not the way it was
planned.

 

This summit will likely only harm Ukraine.

 

European Pravda has obtained the latest draft decision of the summit – the
Joint Communiqué on a Peace Framework.

 

Some amendments to the document are dangerous for Ukraine, but they were
made to achieve consensus among the participants. If this decision is
adopted, it will undermine the key role of "Zelenskyy's peace formula" as a
scenario intended to lead to a just peace.

 

Full: https://www.eurointegration.com.ua/eng/articles/2024/06/5/7187503/

 



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[marxmail] 60 Banks 'Drive Climate Chaos', Pour $6.9T into Fossil Fuels Since 2015 Paris Conference

[Richard Fidler]

May 14, 2024Reading time: 4 minutes

Full Story: The Canadian Press with files from The Energy Mix

Primary Author: Ian Bickis

 

Canadian banks provided almost US$104 billion in fossil fuel funding last
year despite the urgent need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions driving
the climate emergency, says the latest annual Banking on Climate Chaos
report.

 

The report out Monday from a coalition of climate groups said the total
includes US$28.2 billion from the Royal Bank of Canada to place it seventh
globally and US$24 billion from Scotiabank to rank 10th.

 

The top 60 banks together poured a mind-bending $6.9 trillion of lending and
underwriting into fossil fuel projects in the eight years after the 2015
Paris climate conference, "driving climate chaos and causing deadly local
community impacts," the report says.

 

In 2023, they committed US$708 billion, The Canadian Press reports.

 

For most of Canada's five biggest banks, 2023 was among their lowest levels
of oil and gas financing in the eight years since the Paris deal.

 

BMO had its outright lowest year of fossil fuel financing since 2016, but
still came up with US$15.8 billion. CIBC, TD, and RBC each had their lowest
with the exception of pandemic year 2020, while it was the fourth-lowest
year for Scotiabank.

 

While the numbers are lower, they're still stark, Richard Brooks, climate
finance director at Stand.earth, told CP.

 

"There's still massive amounts of money on the scale of, you know, tens of
billions of dollars that are flowing into extreme forms of oil and gas, that
are flowing into expansion projects that lock us in for a long time."

 

In a statement, Canadian Bankers Association spokeswoman Maggie Cheung
maintained Canadian institutions understand their important role in helping
lead what CP calls an "orderly transition" to a low-carbon future.

 

"Firm commitments are required to accelerate clean economic growth and
that's why banks are implementing climate action plans that set specific
targets to meet the demands of this global challenge," she said.

 

But the CBA's statement didn't quite line up with testimony last week before
the Senate banking committee by former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.
He said Canada "is jeopardizing its competitive position by dragging its
feet on major climate-related financial policies as allies quickly adopt
global standards and green investing rule books," the Globe and Mail writes.

 

International corporate sustainability standards were put in place last
year, and are on track to cover more than 100,000 companies worldwide,
Carney told senators. "In contrast, Canadian climate disclosure efforts have
been patchwork, delivered late and falling short of international
standards," said Carney, who founded and now chairs the Glasgow Financial
Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ).

 

CP says the banks' climate targets are fairly long-term, including their
net-zero emissions goal of 2050. Only BMO has set an absolute reduction
target before then.

 

The reduced fossil fuel funding last year could be due to shifts in the oil
and gas industry. There are no major new oilsands projects on the horizon,
while oil and gas companies have also been reaping major profits that help
them self-fund costs and rely less on lenders.

 

Funding levels could fall further this year as major projects like the
massively controversial and over-budget Trans Mountain pipeline expansion
and Coastal GasLink pipeline are now finished.

 

The Banking on Climate Chaos report says the companies behind those projects
were among the top recipients of fossil fuel expansion funding globally. TC
Energy raised US$15.3 billion from the 60 banks covered in the report, while
Trans Mountain raised US$9.54 billion.

 

Calgary-based pipeliner Enbridge Inc. ranked first with US$35 billion
raised, though the report counts money it used for acquisitions as well as
expanded pipeline capacity.

 

While the trends in the oil and gas industry could mean less funding is
needed from banks, Brooks said it's still important for the institutions to
put policies in place to ensure they reduce their financed emissions.

 

He said he was concerned banks are instead walking back policy commitments,
including BMO, which curbed restrictions on lending to coal producers.

 

"If there's no policy in place that limits financing intentionally, then
when a new project comes up, who's going to be first in line to finance that
project?"

 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 13, 2024.

 

To access the report:
https://www.bankingonclimatechaos.org/?bank=JPMorgan%20Chase#fulldata-panel

 



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[marxmail] Ukraine's fight for freedom: a socialist case for solidarity and self-determination

[Richard Fidler]

Historian and activist Paul Le Blanc offers an essential socialist
perspective on the Russia-Ukraine war, arguing for solidarity with Ukraine's
fight for self-determination while opposing the imperialist agendas of both
Russia and Western powers. Drawing on history and revolutionary principles,
Le Blanc makes the case that the democratic and socialist left must stand
with Ukraine's resistance by any means necessary. The text is based on a
talk that Le Blanc delivered on April 15, 2024. First published at
 Anti*Capitalist
Resistance.

* * *

It is necessary for those who support socialism and democracy to support
Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion of their country.  Here I want
to offer some historical and political background as to why I think this is
so. 

 

Full:
https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2024/05/ukraines-fight-for-freedom-socialist
.html

 



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[marxmail] Jason Hickel in Havana: Climate, Energy and Natural Resources

[Richard Fidler]

The climate crisis cannot be solved within capitalism, and the sooner we
face up to this fact the better.

The following is a keynote speech by Jason Hickel at a congress held in
Havana April 28-May 1 to mark the 50th anniversary of the New International
Economic Order (NIEO), a set of proposals to end economic colonialism and
dependency. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration for
the Establishment of a New International Economic Order and its accompanying
program of action on 1 May 1974.

The Havana conference – co-convened by the Progressive International and the
Asociación Nacional de Economistas y Contadores de Cuba – brought together
leading scholars, diplomats and policy-makers from 36 countries for three
days of intense discussion, deliberation and preparation of a Program of
Action for the Establishment of a New International Economic Order ahead of
the September 2024 UN General Assembly.

Jason Hickel teaches at the Institute of Environmental Science and
Technology (ICTA-UAB) in Barcelona and is a visiting senior fellow at the
London School of Economics. He is best-known, perhaps for his book Less is
More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (2020), which presents degrowth as an
anticapitalist alternative to ecological imperialism and unequal exchange.

I will say more about the Havana congress following Hickel’s address, which
I thank the Progressive International for making available. – Richard Fidler

Full:
<https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2024/05/jason-hickel-climate-energy-and-nat
ural.html>
https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2024/05/jason-hickel-climate-energy-and-natu
ral.html

 

 

 



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[marxmail] The student Intifada rises at Montréal universities

[Richard Fidler]

CD reports from the McGill Palestine solidarity encampment

Andrea Levy and André Frappier / May 3, 2024 / 6 min read

 

Students from all four Montréal universities came together over the last
week to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and pressure
their institutions to cut ties with Israel. Following the lead of the camps
protests in the United States, they set up an encampment on the grounds of
McGill University on April 27, calling for a ceasefire and demanding that
Montréal’s halls of higher learning disclose their investments in companies
complicit with the genocide in Palestine and divest from those companies, in
addition to cutting ties with Israeli academic institutions.

 

In the specific case of McGill University, two student groups, McGill Hunger
Strike for Palestine and Students for Justice in Palestine, created a
dataset of McGill’s investments in companies with links to the State of
Israel. They found that “as of December 31, 2023, McGill University held
approximately $74 million in direct investments and $5.5 million in
undisclosed investments in companies complicit in upholding the apartheid
regime of Israel and financing its genocide.”

 

McGill students have pointed out to the media that there is a proud
precedent for divestment at McGill, as it was the first Canadian university
to divest from its holdings in apartheid South Africa in November 1985.

 

In December 2023 it announced it would divest from all direct holdings in
the Carbon Underground 200, that is the top 100 public coal companies
globally and the top 100 public oil and gas companies globally.

 

Full:
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-student-intifada-rises-at-mo
ntreal-universities



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[marxmail] 1st World Anti-Fascist Conference to be held in Porto Alegre from 17 to 19 May 2024

[Richard Fidler]

https://www.cadtm.org/The-singularity-and-importance-of-the-1st-World-Anti-F
ascist-Conference-to-be

 



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[marxmail] Socialism outlawed?

[Richard Fidler]

On April 5, 2024, the Russian Socialist Movement was declared "foreign
agent." What has been its role in Russian left-wing politics? What is the
reason behind its "foreign agent" status? Together with its members,
Posle.media recalls the history of the movement in the past decade

On April 5, 2024, the Russian Socialist Movement (RSM) was declared "foreign
agent." This became the first precedent when the Russian authorities de
facto banned a left-wing organization: it is quite obvious that Putin's
oppressive, antidemocratic law eliminates any opportunity for political
activity under that name. However, if we see the foreign agent status as a
kind of recognition by the regime, it is well deserved. During the 13 years
of its existence, the RSM consistently opposed military aggression,
dictatorship, and the disenfranchisement of the working majority.
Posle.media's team talked to three members of the organization in order to
trace the stages of its evolution, which in many respects mirrors the
political history of Russia in the past decade.

Full: https://posle.media/language/en/socialism-outlawed/

 



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[marxmail] Boris Kagarlitsky transferred to penal colony-let's redouble our efforts for his release!

[Richard Fidler]

https://www.change.org/p/free-boris-kagarlitsky-and-all-russian-anti-war-pol
itical-prisoners/u/32523087

 



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[marxmail] Leftists worldwide rally around Boris Kagarlitsky, call for liberation of all Russian anti-war political prisoners

[Richard Fidler]

Renowned Russian sociologist, dissident was jailed on February 13 for five
years on trumped-up charges of "justifying terrorism"

By Andrea Levy / April 3, 2024,
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/leftists-worldwide-rally-around-
boris-kagarlitsky-call-for-liberation-of-all-russian-anti-war-political-pris
oners

Below this article we have included Kagarlitsky's most recent prison letter
to his daughter in which he talks about Putin's cynical use of the Crocus
City Hall terrorist attack.

 



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[marxmail] Israel Has Formed a Task Force to Carry Out Covert Campaigns at US Universities

[Richard Fidler]

A major Israeli news site says Israel's foreign affairs and diaspora affairs
ministries are behind the operation.

By William I. Robinson , TRUTHOUT

Published March 23, 2024

https://truthout.org/articles/israel-has-formed-a-task-force-to-carry-out-co
vert-campaigns-at-us-universities/?fbclid=IwAR2DPUPiOvDM3zk_BBn6aMOkx9uVbLCU
7orip3JJuplQHc03rdie9E0nYVc

 



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[marxmail] War or peace? A false dilemma in the controversy surrounding the Ukrainian question

[Richard Fidler]

In the absence of conditions for negotiations, talk of an immediate
ceasefire as an alternative to military support is just empty words aimed at
the French public in the electoral campaign. In the absence of other
realistic options, concrete solidarity requires continued military aid to
Ukraine.

By Daria Saburova

March 18, 2024

Daria Saburova, a Ukrainian socialist and feminist, was born in Kyiv where
she lived for 20 years before moving to France where she is currently a
doctoral student in philosophy. This text comes from an intervention during
the public meeting of the Paris region feminist assembly on 12 March 2024.

https://europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article70220

 



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[marxmail] Climate dispatch from Afghanistan

[Richard Fidler]

Jonathan Neale | 8th March 2024

The Taliban is taking the threat of climate breakdown seriously as 40
million Afghans face a future of drought and starvation.

 

Earlier this month I returned to Afghanistan for the first time in 51 years.
Back then I had been a young anthropology student doing fieldwork with
pastoral nomads. Now I write books, reports and articles on climate
breakdown.

 

I had been invited back to give a keynote address at the first International
Climate Change Conference in the country. We are meeting at the University
of Nangarhar, in the east of Afghanistan, about twenty miles from where I
originally did my fieldwork. I've been to a lot of climate change
conferences in the last twenty years. This one is different.

 

I am aware that many readers will be appalled to read anything about the
Taliban that seems even vaguely sympathetic. My purpose in this article is
not to defend the Taliban. But it is important to make it clear that the
leadership of the Taliban, and indeed the whole government, now take climate
breakdown very seriously.

 

https://theecologist.org/2024/mar/08/climate-dispatch-afghanistan

 



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[marxmail] Ukraine: Seven conclusions on the second anniversary of the war

[Richard Fidler]

Vitaliy Dudin, a labour rights lawyer, is a leader of Ukraine’s Social
Movement (Sotsialnyi Rukh). For more on this movement, see “
 A Ukrainian Left under construction on several fronts.” Here is
his assessment of the current situation in the war of resistance against
Russia’s invasion, and the issues now looming within Ukraine. The article,
based here on a French translation by Patrick Le Tréhondat, was published
originally at   https://t.me/trudovikua/72. – RF

https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2024/02/ukraine-seven-conclusions-on-second.
html

 



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[marxmail] For Ukrainian Nobel laureate, making peace with Russia now would be surrender

[Richard Fidler]

The Globe and Mail (Ottawa/Quebec Edition) – subscriber only

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-oleksandra-matviichuk-nobel-ru
ssia-ukraine/

23 Jan 2024

MARK MacKINNON 

SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT 

KYIV

 

ANTON SKYBA/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

 

Oleksandra Matviichuk, pictured last week, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
for her work with the Ukraine-based Centre for Civil Liberties.

 

Oleksandra Matviichuk finds herself in the awkward position of being a Nobel
Peace Prize laureate who believes now is not the time for her country to
seek peace. The suggestion that Ukraine should allow Russia to retain some
or all the territories it has captured, in exchange for a halt in the
fighting, has recently gained traction among some of Ukraine’s allies in the
West.

Both the United States and Germany are reported to have nudged President
Volodymyr Zelensky to be more open to a negotiated settlement, and opinion
polls in Ukraine suggest that the idea is becoming slightly more palatable
here, too. Support for negotiation rose to 19 per cent from 10 per cent
between May and December of last year as the second anniversary of the war
approaches, though the vast majority still oppose any territorial
concessions.

Ms. Matviichuk heads the Centre for Civil Liberties, a human-rights group
that in 2022 became the first Ukrainian recipient of the prestigious Nobel
Prize for advancing the cause of international peace. The Ukrainians won the
prize alongside Memorial, a Russian human-rights organization, and Ales
Bialiatski, a Belarussian dissident.

But Ms. Matviichuk says that any deal that leaves Russian troops occupying
Ukrainian land is no peace at all. “Peace doesn’t come when a country that
was invaded stops fighting. Because it’s not a peace, it’s occupation,” Ms.
Matviichuk told The Globe and Mail in an interview at a café in the trendy
Podil neighbourhood of Kyiv.

She said she and the Centre for Civil Liberties had learned through a decade
of dealing with human-rights cases in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine
that life in those regions was anything but peaceful.

Russia illegally seized and annexed the strategic Crimean Peninsula in 2014,
and Russianbacked forces have ruled parts of the southeastern Donbas region
since the same year.

“I can confidently tell that occupation is just another form of the war.
It’s not better than war, because people in occupied territories live in a
grey zone without any possibilities to defend their rights, their freedom,
their property and their beloved ones,” Ms. Matviichuk said. “Occupation is
horrible. Occupation is not just changing one state flag to another,
occupation means enforced disappearances, rapes, torture, filtration camps,
denial of your identity, forcible adoption of your own children, mass
graves.”

Ms. Matviichuk’s support for her country’s war effort makes her
organization’s place on the list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates somewhat
incongruous. Many previous winners, including Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat
and Yitzhak Rabin, won the award after advocating that their peoples stop
fighting and enter peace talks.

But Ms. Matviichuk also isn’t quite onside with Mr. Zelensky’s position that
there can be no negotiations until the last Russian soldier leaves Ukraine.
The problem, Ms. Matviichuk acknowledges, is that it’s far from clear when
and if Ukraine will be able to free the lands that Russia has taken. While
2022 ended with a burst of optimism after Ukrainian troops liberated the
eastern Kharkiv region and the southern city of Kherson, 2023 was marked by
a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive that left the front lines almost
unchanged.

Rather than endless war, Ms. Matviichuk said she could envision a series of
interim measures that resulted in the gradual departure of Russian troops.
“But we have to set our goal clearly. If we want to restore international
order, we have to sooner or later de-occupy all territories, probably using
different tools, not just military.”

The 40-year-old lawyer and civic activist says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
illustrates how the post-Second World War international system has collapsed
into an era of lawlessness where might makes right. Unless aggressor states
like Russia are stopped, and their leaders punished, she forecasts that the
number of wars will grow.

She pointed specifically to Azerbaijan’s 2023 decision to use force to
reclaim the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was inhabited by ethnic
Armenians and had been under Armenian military control since a 1990s war, as
well as Venezuela’s recent moves to escalate tensions with Guyana.

“As a lawyer, there is a very visible answer that the international system
of peace and security is broken … now that’s become obvious for all people.
And that’s why we will see such wars and conflicts, more and more often,”
she said.

“Azerbaijan, for years, tried to solve this territorial dispute with
Armenia. And then when [Azeri President Ilham Aliyev] understood that th

[marxmail] How to Avoid the Anti-Imperialism of Fools

[Richard Fidler]

Important article by Gilbert Achcar, the main initiator of the protest letter 
signed by hundreds of left activists and scholars circulated on this list 
recently (Erasing People through Disinformation: Syria and the 
“Anti-Imperialism” of Fools): 
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/anti-imperialism-syria-progressive/
These issues have now found their echo in Canadian Dimension: CD editorial 
board: Statement on the resignations, 
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/cd-editorial-board-statement-on-the-resignationsThe
 campists' resignation letter is here: 
https://newcoldwar.org/prominent-activist-writers-quit-left-wing-canadian-journal-citing-bias-against-china-russia/The
 editorial bias of the Desai-Freeman website is clear on their home page: 
https://newcoldwar.org/
- Richard


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[marxmail] The rise of capitalism and the productivity of labour (Michael Roberts)

[Richard Fidler]

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/03/28/the-rise-of-capitalism-and-the-productivity-of-labour/Brenner
 thesis confirmed:“Marx stressed the transition from feudalism to capitalism. 
He argued that after the disappearance of serfdom in the 14th century, English 
peasants were expelled from their land through the enclosure movement. That 
spoliation inaugurated a new mode of production: one where workers did not own 
the means of production, and could only subsist on wage labour. This 
proletariat was ripe for exploitation by a new class of capitalist farmers and 
industrialists. In that process, political revolutions were a decisive step in 
securing the rise of the bourgeoisie. To triumph, capitalism needed to break 
the remaining shackles of feudalism…. Our findings lend some support to the 
Marxist view in that we estimate that the onset of growth preceded both the 
Glorious Revolution and the English Civil War (1642-1651). This timing of the 
onset of growth supports the view that economic change propelled history 
forward and drove political and ideological change.”


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Re: [marxmail] What is, and What is Not, a Capitalist Empire

[Richard Fidler via groups.io]

https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2021/02/twenty-first-century-global-capitalism.htmlArgentine
 Marxist Claudio Katz discusses the differences between capitalist imperialism 
and preceding forms of imperialism... And how the imperialist disorder of today 
still fails to reflect the impact of capitalist globalization processes. 


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Re: [marxmail] Article by Ernie Tate (in French)

[Richard Fidler]

Thanks for finding this linked publication, Ken. It is a complete file of the 
first volumes of La Lutte Ouvrière, which I and a few other comrades in 
Montréal started to produce in November 1964. I had no idea someone had 
reproduced it digitally. The mimeographed publication later went into print and 
continued until early 1971. A successor was Libération, and still later Gauche 
socialiste. All were associated with the Fourth International supporters in 
Quebec. Initially, many of the articles were translated from other 
publications, not just FI-linked. You are right, E. Strong was Ernie Tate. I 
have many articles in there under such pseudonyms as Robert or Richard, for 
example. Michel Bourhis was a pseudonym for Michel Mill. Note the ad p. 5 for a 
public meeting to be addressed by Clifton DeBerry, a Black comrade who was the 
SWP candidate in 1964 for President.


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[marxmail] Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina: Contesting Neo-Liberalism by Occupying Companies, Creating Cooperatives, and Recuperating Autogestión

[Richard Fidler]

Naomi Klein’s popular documentary La Toma (The Take) presented the phenomenon 
of Argentina’s Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores (or firms recovered by 
their workers) to a wide international audience. However, Marcelo Vieta’s 
recent Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina is the first such comprehensive 
English-language review of ‘the largest movement in the world of worker-led 
conversions of capitalist businesses into cooperatives’ (xv). Klein’s 
contribution may have been the popularization of the idea, but this book will 
help bring a more detailed understanding on what ERTs are, where they originate 
and to what they contribute.In fact, it is actually quite unfair to call this 
book Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina, as its scope is far broader than a 
review of this concept in the context of Argentina. In fact, Vieta has written 
two books with this entry: firstly, an analysis of Marxist and other socialist 
theories on worker-self management and secondly, an application of this 
theoretical lens to the Argentine case, with a social history of Argentina 
thrown in for good measure.Driven by the slogan ‘occupar, resistir, producir!’, 
Argentina’s countercultural ERTs ‘have defied their numerical weight and have 
stepped up to the task of saving companies from closure, addressing under- and 
unemployment, stabilising local economies, and securing the social well-being 
of surrounding communities.’ (Ibid) This has given much clout and endorsement 
from communities across Argentina, as Vieta points out with countless examples 
from numerous case studies. Moreover, the more than 400 firms have a survival 
rate of ‘almost 90 percent’ (115), putting lie to the notion that 
entrepreneurship requires the presence of risk-taking investors. Indeed, 
Vieta’s greater purpose with the book is to point to this fact and the 
resulting opportunities for new ‘imaginaries’.Vieta, an Argentine-Canadian 
scholar with Italian roots, has been researching and teaching on the themes of 
social and solidarity economy, cooperatives, worker-recovered enterprises, 
critical theory and the sociology of work for decades. He has also long been 
involved with the International Workers’ Economy Network, amongst other 
projects as a pedagogue. Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina is rich in both 
theory and practice, and is a welcome contribution to the study of the 
phenomenon of workplace democracy that should interest a wide ranger of readers.
Full: 
https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/18742_workers-self-management-in-argentina-contesting-neo-liberalism-by-occupying-companies-creating-cooperatives-and-recuperating-autogestion-by-marcelo-vieta-reviewed-by-jerome-warren/
Let's hope Haymarket gets to publish this in an affordable paperback edition.
Richard


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[marxmail] Remembering Leo Panitch

[Richard Fidler]

Many of us on the left both in Canada and internationally were shocked and 
saddened in mid-December by the sudden death of Leo Panitch from Covid-19, 
contracted while in hospital during unrelated treatment. Leo was well-known not 
just as an insightful political economist but as one of Canada’s rare “public 
intellectuals” who combined his Marxist scholarship with a profound engagement 
with contemporary social and political issues. His views, always expressed with 
admirable clarity, were increasingly sought out by a new generation of 
political activists in North America and Europe.

 By Richard Fidler I first met Leo personally in 1984. Articling with a 
progressive law firm in Toronto, I found that Leo was my contact for arranging 
the visit of Ralph Miliband as guest speaker at the annual Law Union 
conference. Miliband’s presentation was well received, and following the 
meeting Leo suggested the three of us should repair to the pub to which other 
conference participants had adjourned.I remember telling Miliband that I had 
read several of his books but that my favourite was still his first, 
Parliamentary Socialism, A Study in the Politics of Labour. He laughed and said 
“It’s mine too.” Published in 1961, it began famously with the statement: “Of 
political parties claiming socialism to be their aim, the [British] Labour 
Party has always been one of the most dogmatic — not about socialism, but about 
the parliamentary system.” I was in 1962 a member of the provincial council of 
the recently-founded Ontario New Democratic Party, and had found Miliband’s 
analysis of the BLP of immense help in understanding the disturbing features of 
the NDP that I was encountering.Leo Panitch had just recently moved to Toronto 
where he was to establish the most progressive political economy faculty in 
English Canada, at York University. 1984 marked his addition to the editorial 
team producing the annual Socialist Register founded by Miliband, Leo’s mentor 
from the days when he studied for a doctorate in England.[1]In what follows, I 
want to signal and critically engage with what I consider Leo’s major 
contributions to our understanding of the Canadian state and its place within 
global imperialism, as well as the conclusions he drew as they might affect the 
development of an alternative anticapitalist project. Taken together, both 
aspects reveal, in retrospect, a remarkably consistent approach in Leo’s 
lifelong attempt to not only interpret the world but also to help change it.
https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2021/02/remembering-leo-panitch.html



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Re: [marxmail] Ernie Tate’s “Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s and 60s” | Louis Proyect

[Richard Fidler]

Here's my review of Ernie's books:Learning from our history: Ernie Tate’s 
memoir of his early 
yearshttps://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2014/06/learning-from-our-history-ernie-tates.html


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[marxmail] After Trump, what prospects for Biden in the global imperial disorder?

[Richard Fidler]

Claudio Katz presciently analyzes shifts in the imperialist order, the mainstay 
of global capitalism, and weighs what the increasing social and political 
polarization within the United States portends for the Biden administration in 
the effort to restore its sagging world dominance.
Katz is professor of economics at the University of Buenos Aires, as well as a 
researcher with CONICET (National Council for Science and Technology, 
Argentina) and a member of Economists of the Left. My translation from the text 
on his web page.
* * *
The United States’ failed imperial recoveryBy Claudio Katz
SUMMARYThe United States seeks to regain its sagging world dominance by 
capturing wealth, quelling rebellions, and deterring competitors. It supports 
this operation with gigantic military power and a burdensome arms 
economy.Hybrid wars have radically transformed imperial interventionism. They 
have added the chaotic scene of refugees and civilian victims generated by the 
demolition of several states.The breakdown of internal cohesion is the main 
obstacle to the US imperial revival. Trump’s economic and geopolitical failures 
confirmed those limitations. This impotence did not reverse rearmament with new 
atomic devices. With greater diplomacy Biden will pursue aggressive policies 
while using worn out ideological covers.
Full: 
https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2021/01/after-trump-what-prospects-for-biden-in.html


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Re: [marxmail] They Championed Venezuela’s Revolution. They Are Now Its Latest Victims

[Richard Fidler]

Standing by a Radical Chávez: A Conversation with Rafael 
Uzcáteguihttps://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15055
Uzcátequi says the APR stands on Chávez's Homeland Plan (2012), which is in 
fact a highly contradictory program: lots of rhetoric about "ecosocialism" but 
pledging to double Venezuela's oil production by 2019. Seemed oblivious to 
possible (inevitable?) changes in the global market under capitalist 
globalization. Today, Venezuela is importing oil, its production at historic 
lows.
However, overall the APR seems to be a promising development, albeit with slim 
electoral prospects on December 6.
Richard


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Re: [marxmail] Why China Isn’t Capitalist

[Richard Fidler]

In his latest book, which I just purchased but have not yet read, Smith 
analyzes China as “police-state capitalism.” (China’s Engine of Environmental 
Collapse).

 

From: marxmail@groups.io [mailto:marxmail@groups.io] On Behalf Of Louis Proyect
Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2020 5:14 PM
To: marxmail@groups.io
Subject: Re: [marxmail] Why China Isn’t Capitalist

 

On 9/6/20 5:01 PM, Richard Modiano wrote:

"China’s state-owned 'corporations' are not profit maximizers per se like, say, 
Singapore’s state-capitalist Temasek and similar sovereign wealth funds. 
They’re happy to make money when they can. But they’re not obliged to. Many 
have been effectively bankrupt for decades but the government won’t let its 
'zombies' fail so rolls over their loans in perpetuity. In forty years of 
market reform, not a single significant SOE has been permitted to go bankrupt. 
Their existence and purpose is dictated by the Plan not the market. Thus when 
the head of a major state-owned conglomerate was removed for embracing market 
economics a bit too enthusiastically, a Beijing University expert on China’s 
state enterprises remarked:

There’s a system in place, not just one person. The party’s appointee draws his 
position from patronage… and the task is to engage with state leaders and 
safeguard government assets, not to maximize profits." 

 

https://spectrejournal.com/why-china-isnt-capitalist-despite-the-pink-ferraris/

I've been in touch with Richard Smith on these questions. When I commented on 
his FB page that his article was a reversal of earlier positions put forward in 
NLR, he said that he never thought that China was capitalist, only bureaucratic 
collectivist. He must have been influenced by Shachtman. Who knows? All I can 
say is that if you read his 1993 NLR article, it would be easy to conclude that 
if it was not capitalist, it was going full speed ahead in that direction.

Smith: "As we shall see, it was precisely the failure of market reform to 
transform the ‘socialist’ state sector that forced the reform 
leadership—desperate to create jobs, to raise tax revenues, and to avoid the 
fate of the regimes in East Europe and the Soviet Union—to tolerate the growth 
of an initially small but rapidly growing private capitalist sector. Today, 
this dynamic and increasingly powerful capitalist economy within the economy is 
threatening to bring down the entire bureaucratic social order and restore 
capitalism in China. How did this happen?"

For Pete's sake, if looked like this in 1993, how could you not see him as 
predicting capitalism's imminent return?




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[marxmail] FW: As Politicians Clashed, Bolivia's Pandemic Death Rate Soared

[Richard Fidler]

Bolivia was mired in political turmoil when the pandemic hit. The response was
chaotic. And the surge in deaths that followed was among the worst in the world,
according to an analysis by The New York Times.


See also "Bolivia's Perfect Storm: Pandemic, Economic crisis, Repressive coup
regime"
https://tinyurl.com/y3c48y6e




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Re: [marxmail] Charlotta WHO?

[Richard Fidler]

I’ll bet that list did not include Grace Carlson, who was the SWP’s 
vice-presidential candidate in 1948, I believe. She had been one of the SWP 
leaders convicted in 1941 of preaching the overthrow of the US government, and 
was jailed for a few years. She later went back to the Catholic Church and the 
religion of her youth. A tribute to her by JP Cannon is included in his 
Notebook of an Agitator.

 

From: marxmail@groups.io [mailto:marxmail@groups.io] On Behalf Of Michael 
Meeropol
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2020 12:22 AM
To: marxmail@groups.io
Subject: [marxmail] Charlotta WHO?

 

How many people heard the name CHARLOTTA BASS when someone at the Democratic 
convention (maybe one of the nominators?) mentioned a list of women who had run 
for President or Vice PResident and included Shirley Chisholm and CHARLOTTA 
BASS.

 

Quick quiz --- who was she?

 

She was the nominee of the PROGRESSIVE PARTY -- the same party that had 
nominated Henry Wallace (former VP) for President in an effort to capture the 
NEW DEAL spirit and cooperation with the Soviets spirit of FDR -- Wallace who 
had quit Truman's cabinet in 1946 said he was the true legacy of FDR --- the 
hope was he would get 10 million votes and deny Truman the Presidency thereby 
forcing the Democrats to return to the New Deal -- of course it didn't work 
--(he was thoroughly red-baited and Truman stole his domestic agenda and he got 
about 1 million votes)

 

but his party still ran Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates in 1952,

 

The Presidential candidate was SF lawyer Vincent W. Hallinan (one of his sons 
was beaten by Kamala Harris for SF DA in her first race!) and his VP was 
Charlotta Bass, a black woman.

 

Amazing that her name was mentioned 




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Re: [Marxism] Edén Pastora, ‘Commander Zero’ in Nicaragua, Dies at 83

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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*

When he defected from the FSLN, Michael Baumann headlined his Militant article 
at the time: "Comandante Cero lives up to his name."

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis 
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2020 10:20 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Cc: Louis Proyect
Subject: [Marxism] Edén Pastora, ‘Commander Zero’ in Nicaragua, Dies at 83

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*

(Paul Berman used to attack the Sandinista government all the time in 
the Village Voice, touting Eden Pastora as the democratic alternative.)

NY Times, June 17, 2020
Edén Pastora, ‘Commander Zero’ in Nicaragua, Dies at 83
By Robert D. McFadden

Edén Pastora, a hero of the 1979 Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua who 
was known by his nom de guerre, Commander Zero — and who later turned 
against his victorious comrades in arms in a long counterrevolutionary 
war of words and guerrilla attacks that failed to budge the socialist 
regime in Managua — died early Tuesday in a military hospital in that 
city, the capital of Nicaragua. He was 83.



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[Marxism] FW: The Police and Surveillance State in the Post-Lockdown Phase

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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*

On behalf of Michael...

 

From: RKOB [mailto:ak...@rkob.net] 
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2020 1:16 AM
To: Richard Fidler
Subject: The Police and Surveillance State in the Post-Lockdown Phase

 

Dear comrade,

You might be interested in a new essay which I have published. I would also 
appreciate if you could forward this email to the Marxism list for information 
purpose.

Best wishes,

Michael

The Police and Surveillance State in the Post-Lockdown Phase

A global review of the ruling class’s plans of expanding the bonapartist state 
machinery

By Michael Pröbsting, 21 May 2020

https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/police-and-surveillance-state-in-post-lockdown-phase/

 

Contents

 

Introduction

An expected development

The Lockdown was not directed against the pandemic

Which “new normal” is the ruling class planning for?

China: the most successful regime in making “Big Brother” omnipresent

Moscow follows the Chinese model and creates a “Cyber Gulag”

The U.S.: “the ancient past known as February” and today

European Union: surveillance and the model of “red/green zones”

India: State Bonapartism under semi-colonial conditions

South Africa: Lockdown imposed by a “progressive” government

Conclusions

 

 

-- 
Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG
(Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net)
www.rkob.net
ak...@rkob.net
Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314

 


 
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
 

Virenfrei.  
<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
 www.avast.com 

 

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[Marxism] The long march of the locked-down migrants

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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This haunting song by Aadesh Ravi, Hyderabad-based composer, lyric writer and
singer, is surely one of the most powerful cries that's emerged about the
lockdown-driven migrations across India




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[Marxism] Planet of the Humans backlash

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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https://yvesengler.com/2020/05/10/planet-of-the-humans-backlash/

The backlash may be more revealing than the film itself, but both inform us
where we are at in the fight against climate change and ecological collapse. The
environmental establishment's frenzied attacks against Planet of the Humans says
a lot about their commitment to big-money and technological solutions.



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Re: [Marxism] From a forthcoming article on socialist economic planning

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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The role of planning in the ecosocialist transition – a contribution to the
debate
by Michael Löwy
https://tinyurl.com/txtgz4u


-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Jim
Farmelant via Marxism
Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2020 2:31 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Cc: Jim Farmelant
Subject: [Marxism] From a forthcoming article on socialist economic planning

>From a rough draft of a forthcoming article on socialist economic planning 
>being
written with Djamil Lakhdar-Hamina  and Brendan Sullivan.
--
Visions of Socialism:

One of the most striking phenomena in US politics since the 2008 economic crash
has been a revival of interest in socialism, especially among the Millennial
generation. In fact, you would have to go back some eighty or more years ago to
see a time when there was such a big interest in socialism. Even in the 1960’s,
the last period when we saw the flourishing of major leftist political movements
, there wasn’t so much a mass interest in socialism as much as there were
movements led by people who identified as socialists or communists. Most public
discussion then was over things like civil rights, black power, and opposition
to the Vietnam War. There wasn’t that much talk as to what a socialist
alternative to capitalism would look like, even though many political activists
back then would have described themselves as being anti-capitalist.



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Re: [Marxism] Webinar this Saturday - : SHINING THE LIGHT ON CUBA'S MEDICAL SOLIDARITY

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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This interview by an informed expert clarifies what is involved:

"For the emergency medical support, Cuba charges nothing. It depends on whether
host governments want to compensate the Cubans, but there is no price tag, as I
understand it. Likewise, for healthcare for what's called the Programa Integral
de Salud in poorer countries - sub-Sahara Africa is a good example - Cuba
charges nothing.

"However, for countries such as Qatar, where Cuba has got a hospital of 400
Cuban medical personnel, Cuba charges a lot of money. It charges less than what
the European and North American-trained doctors and nurses would charge, but it
does receive money from that. Estimates vary, but I would calculate about $6
billion goes into Cuban coffers as a result of Cuban medical services abroad.

"This money goes to maintain the Cuban medical system. So it is a form of
subsidizing the Cuban healthcare system, which I think makes eminent sense. For
the number of countries that pay for medical services, there is a sliding scale.
Some countries can afford to pay. Arab countries have a lot of petro-dollars
that they use. Angola, South Africa are fairly wealthy, they can pay. But if you
go to countries such as Gambia or Niger, you will see that  - if they do pay -
they will pay significantly less."




-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Chris
Slee via Marxism
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2020 7:38 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Cc: Chris Slee; Ken Hiebert
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Webinar this Saturday - : SHINING THE LIGHT ON CUBA'S
MEDICAL SOLIDARITY

My understanding is that the poorest countries don't have to pay anything, while
richer countries pay on a sliding scale.

Chris Slee


David Duport asks
Cuba still charges host countries for these medical missions, right?

I can't say that I know all the facts.  It would make sense if some countries
did pay.  The item below suggests otherwise.
ken h

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism




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[Marxism] COVID-19 debt crisis: Is Modern Monetary Theory a solution? (GLW)

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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"While MMT proposes a solution to the problem of unemployment, it is often put
forward without sufficient cognisance of the fact that, for capitalism,
unemployment is not necessarily a problem to be solved, but rather a valuable
tool to maintain profits.

Having a pool of workers who are poor and unemployed keeps up competition for
jobs, which helps keep wages down. Economists even tend to define full
employment as being when 4-5% of people are unemployed. Anything lower than that
is viewed as undesirable, because it strengthens workers' bargaining power.

This doesn't mean that MMT should not be used to try to eliminate unemployment.
But, as long as capitalism exists, measures to eliminate unemployment will be
met with a war and not a thank you.

All the money and power of capital and its media and politicians will be brought
to fight against measures that would have all workers benefiting from decent
standards of living.

There are likewise problems if MMT were to be used as a solution to the
environmental crisis, if the capitalist sector left to its own devices. If an
army of job guarantee workers were enlisted to help save the planet while a
capitalist sector is left to destroy it, the climate catastrophe would merely be
postponed.

Also, on the environmental front, while MMT provides a means to solve
unemployment by using the economy to capacity, the environmental crisis means
that we may not want to use the economy to capacity."


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Re: [Marxism] [UCE] Howie Hawkins Twitter account restored!

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I get this message when I click on the URL below: "Sorry, due to an error, we
are unable to fulfill your request at the moment. You may want to contact your
administrator or service provider with more details about what action you were
performing when this occurred. Could not find valid value for id"

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2020 9:22 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Cc: Louis Proyect
Subject: [Marxism] [UCE] Howie Hawkins Twitter account restored!

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https://hawkins2020.us/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1

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[Marxism] FW: PDF DOWNLOAD of new Book on COVID-19 Global Counterrevolution

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Dear comrade,

The publication of my new book is now completed and it can be downloaded as a 
PDF on our website. I would appreciate if you could forward this email to the 
Marxism list for information purpose.

Best wishes,

Michael

 

The COVID-19 Global Counterrevolution: What It Is and How to Fight It

A Marxist analysis and strategy for the revolutionary struggle

by Michael Pröbsting

https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/the-covid-19-global-counterrevolution/

 

-- 
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(Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net)
www.rkob.net
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Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314

 

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Diese E-Mail wurde von Avast Antivirus-Software auf Viren geprüft. 
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[Marxism] FW: NEW BOOK on COVID-19 Global Counterrevolution

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Michael has asked me to forward this to the list. I do so as an act of 
solidarity and take no responsibility for the content, which I have not read.

Richard 

The COVID-19 Global Counterrevolution: What It Is and How to Fight It

A Marxist analysis and strategy for the revolutionary struggle

by Michael Pröbsting

https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/the-covid-19-global-counterrevolution/

 

-- 
Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG
(Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net)
www.rkob.net
ak...@rkob.net
Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314

 


 

 

Virenfrei.  

 www.avast.com 

 

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Re: [Marxism] Reformism Yesterday and Social Democracy Today

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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But URL indicates that Jacobin posted the article in August 2018, when they 
were already beating the drums for Sanders.

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis 
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2020 10:19 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Cc: Louis Proyect
Subject: [Marxism] Reformism Yesterday and Social Democracy Today

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(From a 1985 Socialist Register article by Marcel Liebman. Could it 
possibly be the first inkling that the Jacobin intellectuals realize 
they have been wasting their time with this "democratic socialism" 
baloney? Probably not...)

Even the accomplishments of the old social democracy — the precious but 
limited reforms which did not even challenge the capitalist order — are 
beyond the grasp of contemporary reformism. Whilst tradition obliges us 
to use labels like “reformism” and “social democracy,” only those who 
stand to gain from them are fooled by them.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/08/social-democracy-marcel-liebman-socialist-politics

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[Marxism] The role of planning in the ecosocialist transition - a contribution to the debate

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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The semiannual French review Les Possibles, a publication of Attac France, in
its most recent issue (23) features a number of articles on planning for the
ecological and social transition. Most are addressed to the issue of socialist
planning vs. capitalist markets that was prominent in the debates of 20th
century socialism. The contribution by Michael Löwy puts this debate in the
ecosocialist framework that has emerged in this century. My translation of it is
published below.

Michael Löwy is a Franco-Brazilian philosopher and sociologist, and emeritus
research director at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He
is the author of numerous books, including The War of the Gods: Religion and
Politics in Latin America and Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s “On the
Concept of History.” He is also a leading member of the Global Ecosocialist
Network.

* * *

Ecological and social planning and transition

By Michael Löwy

April 3, 2020

The need for economic planning in any serious and radical process of
socio-ecological transition is winning greater acceptance, in contrast to the
traditional positions of the Green parties, favorable to an ecological variant
of “market economy,” that is, “green capitalism.”

In her latest book, Naomi Klein observes that any serious reaction to the
climate threat “involves recovering an art that has been relentlessly vilified
during these decades of market fundamentalism: planning.” This includes, in her
view, industrial planning, land use planning, agricultural planning, employment
planning for workers whose occupations are made obsolescent by the transition,
etc. “This means bringing back the idea of planning our economies based on
collective priorities rather than profitability….”[1]

Democratic planning

The socio-ecological transition — towards an ecosocialist alternative — implies
public control of the principal means of production and democratic planning.
Decisions concerning investment and technological change must be taken away from
the banks and capitalist businesses, if we want them to serve the common good of
society and respect for the environment.

Who should make these decisions? Socialists often responded: “the workers.” In
Volume III of Capital, Marx defines socialism as a society of “the associated
producers rationally regulating their interchange (Stoffwechsel) with Nature.”
However, in Volume I of Capital, we find a broader approach: socialism is
conceived as “an association of free men, working with the means of production
(gemeinschaftlichen) held in common.” This is a much more appropriate concept:
production and consumption must be organized rationally not only by the
“producers” but also by consumers and, in fact, the whole of society, the
productive or “unproductive” population: students, youth, women (and men)
homemakers, retired persons, etc.

Full: https://tinyurl.com/txtgz4u



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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] FW: Michael Klare's Paean to the American Military

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Klare's is a military institution-centric framing with no regulatory or 
normative roles for local, national, regional, or international 
institutions. The book's present tense title is telling: what's just a 
possibility (hell breaking loose) is accepted as an inevitable reality, 
a law of nature. This is a closed system, and it is sealed against 
inquiry into causes and challenging facts. "Senior officials at the 
Department of Defense and the American intelligence community have 
peered into the future and seen this world." The thesis is that it may 
be possible to mitigate and adapt to climate change but untouched here 
are all the systemic causes of both proliferating emissions and of human 
disaster. The designation "resource-deprived states everywhere" is 
unquestioned by Klare and by the military: unasked, who exploits the 
resources?

The unquestioning endorsement of the American military is especially 
significant in view of Klare's previous critical work on America's 
energy wars and politics. He is the defense expert for the Nation 
magazine and is a frequent contributor to Counterpunch, Tomgram, and 
Democracy Now. His new book is acclaimed by Bill McKibben (founder of 
350.org) and human rights historian Adam Hochschild, and it was 
uncritically featured in the New York Times and The Guardian.

Full:







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[Marxism] FW: How the coronavirus pandemic is making strongmen stronger, from Hungary to Serbia to the Philippines

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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With governments around the world adopting extraordinary measures amid the
pandemic, ostensibly to protect their citizens - but often in directions that
have little or nothing to do with public health - one of the most potent
legacies of this era may prove to be a global erosion of democratic freedoms.

The power grabs have been dubbed "coronavirus coups" in some countries, and
three months into the crisis, with no end in sight, there are concerns that
leaders such as Hungary's Viktor Orban are capitalizing on COVID-19 to seize
powers they may never relinquish.

https://tinyurl.com/rqrpmeh




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Re: [Marxism] How Netflix And "Manning Marable" Killed Malcolm X (The Third Time) - CounterPunch.org

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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You tempt me to engage with the rest of that paragraph on George Breitman, in 
which you contrast to him what you call “the Marxist-Leninist view,” its main 
protagonist in your view being none other than... “Joseph Stalin.” Tell that to 
the dozens of oppressed nations and nationalities in Stalin’s USSR, from the 
Ukrainians to the Tatars.

But that’s like shooting fish in a barrel, so I won’t bother to go there. Rest 
content with the "imperfect" Amiri Baraka (how patronizing!) and your own 
professed perfection.

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Andrew 
Stewart via Marxism
Sent: Saturday, February 29, 2020 10:22 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: Re: [Marxism] How Netflix And "Manning Marable" Killed Malcolm X (The 
Third Time) - CounterPunch.org

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How strikingly ironic that in the final lines of your rebuttal you end up 
reinforcing my argument:

“Malcolm did not complete this synthesis before he was
assassinated. It remains for others to complete what he began."

A) That anyone can look at the program that El-Shabazz was articulating at the 
time of his death and say it was somehow lacking is demonstrable of both 
paternalistic condescension and absolute cluelessness about the matter at hand. 
The Organization of Afro-American Unity was building a revolutionary 
internationalist bloc of power that accomplished far more than the tin-pot 
American Trots ever did. El-Shabazz was constructing multinational power across 
the Global South. His revolutionary education in prison was thoroughly soaked 
in Marxian thought, including Fanon and Du Bois. Plain and simple, the white 
American Left had more to learn from El-Shabazz than they had to teach him. His 
synthesis had been completed in prison and it was instead a matter of his 
rhetorical strategy evolving over the course of his ministerial career in order 
to better suit the nuances of his circumstances. The claim that he evolved or 
changed is complete garbage. It is interesting that you don’t include the lines 
from Kamau Franklin, author of the Breitman critique (perhaps you fear 
engagement with the substance of his points?), but oh well...

B) The multicultural religious Left has always accomplished more than the 
secular Left cults. Du Bois elaborated on this in THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK in 
the chapter about the Sorrow Songs. Martin Luther King Jr and El-Shabazz built 
power while the CPUSA and the Socialists and the Trotskyists didn’t. If you go 
back to the Debs era, the socialist periodical with highest subscription rate 
was a religious socialist one that crossed ethnic lines.

Amiri Baraka, imperfect in a few areas, hit the nail on the head here in his 
analysis of the Marable book:

https://blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/2011/05/amiri-baraka-on-marables-malcolm-x.html?m=1

You obviously have more to learn from Malcolm X than he would from you or 
Breitman.

Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 
- - -
Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via 
https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/
Andrew Stewart writes: 

"[George] Breitman's Eurocentric Trotskyism articulates the claim that Black
nationalism is an ideological delusion that diverts from the revolutionary
cause. This is contrary to the Marxist-Leninist view, one embraced by Cuba and
China during the years El-Shabazz sought to build the bloc supporting the UN
petition, that the national liberation struggles are themselves revolutionary."

This is an outrageous misrepresentation. Anyone who has read George Breitman or
who knew him personally (as I did) would consider the view attributed to him by
Stewart to be beyond reason or belief. Breitman was one of the most far-sighted
Marxist sympathizers of Black nationalism in the United States. He probably did
more than anyone else to publicize Malcolm's revolutionary legacy (the real
legacy ignored by the Netflix series). Consider just this one brief excerpt from
his extensive writings spanning several decades. It is from "In Defense of Black
Power," (October 1966), available with many other works in the Breitman Archive
on Marxists.org.:

"Organizationally, the Black Power tendency is only in the early stages of its
development; the various groups and individuals who have raised the Black Power
banner have not yet defined their relations to each oth

Re: [Marxism] Daniel J. Berrigan, Defiant Priest Who Preached Pacifism, Dies at 94

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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He died in 2016, as the article indicates.

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Dennis
Brasky via Marxism
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2020 2:49 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Daniel J. Berrigan, Defiant Priest Who Preached Pacifism,
Dies at 94

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https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/nyregion/daniel-j-berrigan-defiant-priest-who
-preached-pacifism-dies-at-94.html

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Re: [Marxism] How Netflix And "Manning Marable" Killed Malcolm X (The Third Time) - CounterPunch.org

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Andrew Stewart writes: 

"[George] Breitman's Eurocentric Trotskyism articulates the claim that Black
nationalism is an ideological delusion that diverts from the revolutionary
cause. This is contrary to the Marxist-Leninist view, one embraced by Cuba and
China during the years El-Shabazz sought to build the bloc supporting the UN
petition, that the national liberation struggles are themselves revolutionary."

This is an outrageous misrepresentation. Anyone who has read George Breitman or
who knew him personally (as I did) would consider the view attributed to him by
Stewart to be beyond reason or belief. Breitman was one of the most far-sighted
Marxist sympathizers of Black nationalism in the United States. He probably did
more than anyone else to publicize Malcolm's revolutionary legacy (the real
legacy ignored by the Netflix series). Consider just this one brief excerpt from
his extensive writings spanning several decades. It is from "In Defense of Black
Power," (October 1966), available with many other works in the Breitman Archive
on Marxists.org.:

"Organizationally, the Black Power tendency is only in the early stages of its
development; the various groups and individuals who have raised the Black Power
banner have not yet defined their relations to each other or united into a
single movement or federation. But numerically it is already considerably
stronger than the organized adherents of Malcolm's movement. The Student
Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE), groups in the new tendency, are national organizations, with thousands
of members or sympathizers. They have an experienced cadre of dedicated leaders
and activists, hardened in battle along many fronts and equipped with a variety
of skills. They represent the best of the new generation of young freedom
fighters who appeared on the scene around 1960, with a consistently more
militant outlook than that of previous generations and an enviable ability to
learn from experience and grow.

"Ideologically and politically, the Black Power tendency is also still in the
process of crystallization. But its direction-to the left-is unmistakably
indicated by the way it has broken away from several of the premises and
shibboleths of the old "civil rights" consensus. Internationalist and
anti-imperialist, it expresses solidarity with the worldwide struggle against
colonialism and neo-colonialism, condemns the US war in Vietnam and rejects the
contention that the freedom movement "should not mix civil rights and foreign
policy." It spurns the straitjacket of "non-violence" and proclaims the right of
self-defense. It challenges the fraudulent claim that freedom can be won through
the passage of a series of civil-rights laws that are largely un-enforced and
benefit mainly middle-class Negroes.

"Some of its adherents still believe in working inside the Democratic Party, but
others advocate a complete break with the Democrats and Republicans and the
establishment of independent black or black-led parties - not only in Lowndes
County, Ala., but in the Northern ghettos. Some accept capitalism; others are
talking rather vaguely about a cooperative based economy for the black community
that they think would be neither capitalist nor socialist; and there is also
evidently a pro-socialist grouping, as was shown when delegates at a Black Power
planning conference in Washington Sept. 3 posed the need to "determine which is
more politically feasible for the advancement of black power, capitalism or
socialism."

Unfortunately, the book cited by Stewart (The Last Year of Malcolm X: The
Evolution of a Revolutionary) is not on-line, although it can be purchased from
several sources. But anyone with a copy can see countless statements in it that
refute Stewart's libellous allegation. In particular, I recommend what Breitman
writes on pp. 55-56 and 66-69. As he states in the final paragraph of those
pages:

"[Malcolm's] uncertainty about the name to call himself arose from the fact that
he was doing something new in the United States -- he was on the way to a
synthesis of black nationalism and socialism that would be fitting for the
American scene and acceptable to the masses in the black ghetto. (An example of
the tendency of revolutionary nationalism to grow over into and become merged
with socialism can be seen in Cuba, where Castro and his movement began as
nationalist.) Malcolm did not complete this synthesis before he was
assassinated. It remains for others to complete what he began."

-- Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Andrew
Stewart v

Re: [Marxism] Global Research discusses tragic airliner crash

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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From the egg on our faces department at Global Research, the article (still 
there) is now preceded by this:

"Update

"The latest information suggests that the Ukraine plane was brought down by a 
missile, following statements emanating from the Iranian government."

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Ken 
Hiebert via Marxism
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2020 1:46 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Global Research discusses tragic airliner crash

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As of this morning, this article still appears on the Global Research website.
I have omitted some of the article.
ken h

“Fake Intelligence”? Washington Blames Iran for Ukraine Airliner Crash. Was the 
Plane Brought down by a Missile?
Stephen Lendman

https://www.globalresearch.ca/blaming-iran-ukraine-airliner-crash/5700207 




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Re: [Marxism] Werner Angress’s “Stillborn Revolution: the Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921-1923” (part five, the conclusion)) | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Louis, I got as far as this, near the end of the second paragraph:
"The leaflet announced that any counterrevolutionary attack on the workers 
would be met by a general strike, and urged all proletarians to hum action 
committees and defense organizations within the next wry”, and to meet daily in 
the factories and other places of work hit discussions of the situation."

Could you proofread this text and repost it to your blog?

Thanks,
Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis 
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2019 1:38 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Werner Angress’s “Stillborn Revolution: the Communist Bid 
for Power in Germany, 1921-1923” (part five, the conclusion)) | Louis Proyect: 
The Unrepentant Marxist

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This is the fifth and final part of a series of excerpts from Werner 
Angress’s “Stillborn Revolution: the Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 
1921-1923”.

Part one reproduces the chapter “The Genesis of the March Uprising” that 
deals with the poorly conceived ultraleft March 1921 Action of the 
German Communist Party that was based on a strategy shared by the CP 
leadership and the Comintern representatives in Germany, including Bela 
Kuhn. Breaking with the German party, Paul Levi called it the “greatest 
Bakunist putsch in history”.

Part two reproduces the chapter “The March Uprising and Its Failure”. It 
gets into the incredibly counter-productive tactics of the CP that 
treated SP workers who failed to join their adventurism as class enemies.

Part three reproduces the chapter “Retribution, Recrimination and 
Critique”, which sums up the thinking of the German CP and the Comintern 
on what went wrong. The united front strategy was an attempt to avoid 
the ultraleft mistakes of the March Action but it failed to acknowledge 
its author Paul Levi, who was the only Communist capable of overseeing 
its application.

Part four reproduces the chapter “Revolution in Preparation” that covers 
another fiasco that took place only two years later during October 1923. 
It flows from the same difficult circumstances, namely the goal of 
overthrowing a government led by the SP. Since the SP head of the 
government in Saxony supported the CP’s goal, this was not out of the 
question. However, the failure of the CP to win over the SP rank and 
file precluded a positive outcome.

In this the final part, you will be reading the final chapter of 
Angress’s book, which is titled The Abortive “German October”. It 
describes the inability of the CP to rally SP workers around the goal of 
overthrowing a government that many identified with. As stated above, 
this was not out of the question given the misery of the German 
population in 1923. But it required a more intelligent leadership in 
both the German party and the Comintern, which at this point was led by 
Zinoviev. The final pages of the chapter discuss how Zinoviev blocked 
with the German CP’s ultraleft faction led by Ruth Fischer and Arkadi 
Maslow against Trotsky. In 1924, the Comintern adopted the 
“Bolshevization” measures that both undermined a thorough accounting for 
what went wrong in Germany as well as fetishized the organizational 
methods of Lenin’s party, which became the norm for “Leninist” parties 
until now.

full: 
https://louisproyect.org/2019/12/04/werner-angresss-stillborn-revolution-the-communist-bid-for-power-in-germany-1921-1923-part-five-the-conclusion/
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Re: [Marxism] Putin and Bolivia

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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The information in this article on Russian investments in Bolivia probably
explains why Putin's government was so quick to recognize the golpista
President's counter-revolutionary regime. They just want to do business,
political sympathies aside. As Lou says, geopolitics down the drain...

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Thomas
Campbell via Marxism
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 9:46 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Putin and Bolivia

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It's strange that no one on this list knows that, before it threw him under
the bus the other day, apparently, the Putin regime was supporting Evo
Morales in its own peculiar way and, in turn, Morales was one of the few
world leaders who recognized the Kremlin's occupation of Crimea as
legitimate and made a good number of trips to Moscow.

About a month ago, the Russian investigative journalism website Proekt
reported that Rosatom, Russia's national nuclear energy corporation, had
sent a spin doctors to Bolivia to help Morale in his election company. Now
Quartz has summarized Proekt's article for English speakers.

https://qz.com/1749788/russia-allegedly-helped-evo-morales-in-bolivian-election/
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Re: [Marxism] [Discussion] Left of Europe, by Ashley Smith | Harper's Magazine

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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As the first sentence states, this interview was published in New Politics this
last summer. Available on-line:
https://tinyurl.com/y68ydotk


-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2019 11:18 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] [Discussion] Left of Europe, by Ashley Smith | Harper's
Magazine

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Neil Davidson interview. Harper's used to have a strict paywall barrier 
but recently they have eased up a bit. I am not sure how many free 
articles you are allowed but this one should be retrieved.

https://harpers.org/archive/2019/10/left-of-europe-brexit-european-union/
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Re: [Marxism] Why Bolivian indigenous movements draw their power from oral history - NationofChange

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Here's my review of Ben Dangl's book:
Exploring the Indigenous background to Bolivia's 'Process of change'
https://tinyurl.com/y6eq25yj


-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2019 11:19 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Why Bolivian indigenous movements draw their power from oral
history - NationofChange

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https://www.nationofchange.org/2019/06/25/why-bolivian-indigenous-movements-draw
-their-power-from-oral-history/
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Re: [Marxism] Camejo and Shawki

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Not to mention Pedro's prediction of slowing economic growth from energy
shortages. Like so many (remember the late Mark Jones on this list?), there was
a tendency to view resource (and particularly oil) exploitation as a technical
question of physical availability (that was Hubbert's error) without factoring
in the role of the capitalist profit drive in finding new ways to develop new
sources (e.g. fracking, which now makes the US the largest oil producer
globally, or close to it). Oil production continues to increase, as does the use
of fossil-fuel energy. That's capitalism...

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Patrick
Bond via Marxism
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2019 12:13 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Camejo and Shawki

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On 2019/06/27 3:58 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
>
> I'm working on an article about the ex-ISO right now and accessed this 
> article I wrote in 2004 for background.
>
> http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/american_left/CamejoShawki.htm
> _ 


On Camejo: "He pointed to the likelihood that the United States has 
either reached the Hibbert curve or will soon do so. This means that the 
rate of economic growth will be slowed by energy shortages. We are also 
facing a situation in which home ownership has become a kind of savings 
plan for most working people, as house values increase as a result of 
cheap mortgage rates induced by low inflation rates. When rising energy 
costs leads to an inflationary spike, home values will begin to sharply 
decrease. The consequence might be massive consumer default and bankruptcy."

This is a line of argument I'm not too familiar with, but it's plausible 
since the oil price hit $145/barrel in 2008 (before crashing to $35 
within a few months). But I thought the general correlation of inflation 
to real estate was opposite to what's posited below (i.e., inflationary 
spikes allow real estate to hold value better than other commodity 
forms). Also, my sense of 2007-08 mortgage defaults in the U.S. was much 
more based upon the Exploding Adjustable Rate Mortgage phenomenon (a 
low-interest baiting, then switching to high rates after a few years), 
which especially hit African American neighborhoods, as well as those 
who were engaged in real estate flips coming up to the top of the 
Kuznets property cycle in particular locales in the U.S. Southwest, 
Florida and a few vulnerable cities. But I stand to be corrected. Has 
anyone revisited this?

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Re: [Marxism] Marta Harnecker has Passed Away -

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Fucking google translation!

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2019 8:14 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Marta Harnecker has Passed Away -

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https://walterlippmann.com/marta-harnecker-has-passed-away/
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Re: [Marxism] Trump and the reluctance to reckon with something fundamentally new

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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The role of the US sanctions is explained here, in an article by Mark Weisbrot
and Jeffrey Sachs (!):
Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela
https://www.alainet.org/es/node/199684

The article does not critique the disastrous failure of the chavistas to counter
Venezuela's dependence on hydrocarbons, and it ignores the role of the Obama
administration in initiating the sanctions (Obama was the first US president to
declare Venezuela "an usual and extraordinary threat to the national security"
of the United States). But it is an authoritative analysis of the devastating
impact of the US sanctions.

I concur with Chris Slee's concern over the failure of the US left to challenge
the blockade of Venezuela (and I add the overwhelming complicity of the Canadian
social-democratic and labour left in that blockade as implemented in turn by the
Trudeau government).

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Chris
Slee via Marxism
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2019 6:09 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Trump and the reluctance to reckon with something
fundamentally new

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Trump has backed off from threats to invade Venezuela, but as far as I am aware
there has been no change to the economic sanctions - which are an attempt to
impose an economic blockade against Venezuela.

The threat of invasion was, I think, psychological warfare rather than an
imminent threat.  An invasion may happen later, after Venezuela has been
weakened further by the blockade.

It disturbs me that the US left does not seem to be campaigning vigorously
against the blockade (as far as I can tell observing from afar).

Chris Slee

From: Marxism  on behalf of John Reimann
via Marxism 
Sent: Wednesday, 8 May 2019 2:41:06 AM
To: Chris Slee
Subject: [Marxism] Trump and the reluctance to reckon with something
fundamentally new

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A week ago, we had a short debate here on the significance of Trump's
defending the Russian presence in Venezuela. That defense came after Pompeo
and Bolton had rattled their sabres on that score and it also came an hour
or so after Trump had spoken with Putin. My view was that it was yet
another example of the degree to which Putin is pulling Trump's strings.
Another way of seeing it is that it's an example of how the mainstream of
the US capitalist class has largely lost control over its presidency. This,
of course, is a description of bonapartism, and while we're not all the way
there yet, I believe that's the essence of the issue. This, of course,
means a sharp transformation in how capitalism rules in the United States -
possibly the biggest political transformation since the US Civil War.

I also believe that the great majority of the left - including Marxists -
are having a hard time wrapping their heads around this transformation.
It's not easy to change our orientation, after all. In this article, I lay
out the argument and also the evidence for my view.

https://oaklandsocialist.com/2019/05/06/trump-and-the-reluctance-to-reckon-with-
something-fundamentally-new/

One detail: I quote an email from Michael Karadjis in the article. I do so
with his permission.

John Reimann

--
*"In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery." *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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Re: [Marxism] William Krehm, Canadian Trotskyist activist and Spanish Civil War veteran, Died at 105 | Dead Obituary

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Posted on the Socialist Project list by Andy Lehrer:

William Krehm died this past Friday. While better known in recent years as the
founder and leader of COMER, the neo-social credit monetary reform outfit, Krehm
has a fascinating history as a Trotskyist in the 1930s when he was a member of
the Communist League of America, led a faction opposed to Maurice Spector, and
then left to join what became the   League for a Revolutionary Party (the
"Fieldites"), led by Krehm in Canada and which for a time, was larger in Toronto
than the Trotskyist organization of the time. In 1936, he went to Spain to
volunteer with the POUM in the Spanish Civil War, was in the same unit as Eric
Arthur Blair (George Orwell), and was jailed for three months by the Communists
when the POUM was outlawed.. He returned to Toronto and in 1938 organized an
anti-fascist counterprotest across from Massey Hall where Adrien Arcand's
fascists were holding a rally. He went to Mexico in 1940, and stood guard over
Trotsky's body at his funeral.

He then became a foreign correspondent for Time in Latin America, lost his job
after the Cold War made his views unpalatable, and ultimately returned to
Toronto where he abandoned left wing politics and first became a music critic
and then a real estate developer during the post-war property boom (and as such
campaigned against rent controls). Perhaps it's not surprising that when he
returned to political activity it wasn't as a socialist but as an advocate of
crackpot neo-social credit monetary theory.. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Krehm

Popplewell, Brett (May 18, 2008). "Toronto revolutionary, 93, girds for one more
battle". Toronto Star
https://www.thestar.com/news/2008/05/17/toronto_revolutionary_93_girds_for_one_m
ore_battle.html

Last Man Standing Of the 1,600 Canadians who volunteered to fight in the Spanish
Civil War, only one remains (The Walrus, December 2016)
https://thewalrus.ca/last-man-standing/

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2019 5:00 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] William Krehm, Canadian Trotskyist activist and Spanish Civil
War veteran, Died at 105 | Dead Obituary

https://deadobituary.com/william-krehm-canadian-trotskyist-activist-and-spanish-
civil-war-veteran-died-at-105


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Re: [Marxism] Krugman on two parties

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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But it's all about the Republicans -- and thus an apparent argument in favour 
of the Democrats as the party that will still defend "American values."

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Anthony 
Boynton via Marxism
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2019 10:29 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Krugman on two parties

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Despite the bullshit, Krugman’s analysis of the two parties is
substantially correct.



The Great Republican Abdication: A party that no longer believes in
American values.

New York Times by Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist April 22, 2019



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Re: [Marxism] Revolutionary strategy and the electoral road | John Riddell

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Here is one such balance sheet, by Québec solidaire, the left party that
receives precious little attention on this list although many in the US and
(Anglo) Canadian left could learn much from its experience:
"Québec solidaire reviews the election and maps campaign on climate crisis"
http://tinyurl.com/y6y25gwj

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Mark
Lause via Marxism
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2019 11:29 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Revolutionary strategy and the electoral road | John
Riddell

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Realizing that this is a regrettably short note, I am compelled to ask what
sort of strategic balance sheet have any of the groups engaged in electoral
politics ever written?

Or even a serious non-cheerleading analysis of their work after the end of
a particular campaign?

I suspect we know the answer.
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Re: [Marxism] Marxist Center Delegates Council Statement on the Dissolution of the International Socialist Organization (ISO)

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Where is there an official statement by the ISO of its dissolution?

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2019 8:46 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Marxist Center Delegates Council Statement on the Dissolution
of the International Socialist Organization (ISO)

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https://regenerationmag.org/marxist-center-delegates-council-statement-on-the-di
ssolution-of-the-international-socialist-organization-iso/
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[Marxism] Manifesto for a new popular internationalism in Europe

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Collective article presented by more than 150 co-signatories including Eric
Toussaint , Esther Vivas , Catherine Samary , Costas Lapavitsas , Stathis
Kouvelakis , Tijana Okic , Nathan Legrand , Alexis Cukier , Jeanne Chevalier ,
Yayo Herrero.

March 21, 2019

The ReCommons Europe Manifesto has been drawn up by a group of researchers and
activists from a dozen or so countries in Europe who wish to propose a plan to
be carried out by the radical left forces that want to create the conditions for
social change in the interests of the majority of the population after coming to
power in a European country with the active support of the population. It forms
part of the ReCommons Europe Project which was initiated by two international
networks, the CADTM and EReNSEP, and the Basque trade union ELA, with the aim of
contributing to the strategic debates taking place on the European radical left
today. It was written collectively in the course of meetings which took place in
2018. It follows on from the appeal entitled "Ten Proposals to Beat the European
Union", a collective document published by more than 70 signatories in February
2017.

http://www.cadtm.org/Manifesto-for-a-new-popular-internationalism-in-Europe


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[Marxism] ISO (and Mike Gonzalez) on Venezuela

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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https://socialistworker.org/2019/03/04/venezuela-on-the-brink

According to Gonzalez, it's just an inter-imperialist struggle. But these
imperialisms seem to be on opposite sides, so can we at least take a position
between sides? No, “there is nothing to choose between Guaidó and Maduro.” Nor
should the Venezuelan army defend the country's territorial sovereignty: “for
the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Venezuela’s border.” Also, support
for the Committee for the Defense of the Constitution’s call for a referendum,
which (not mentioned) they asked Guaidó to approve, in a meeting with him. And
the international left is to be condemned for “supporting” Maduro – no evidence
presented, the distinction between “defence” (against imperialism) and political
support being lost on Gonzalez. Not to mention various misstatements of facts,
hardly worth mentioning. Pathetic.

Richard


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[Marxism] THE EMPIRE BEHIND THE COUP

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Justin Akers Chacón, author of Radicals in the Barrio and No One is Illegal,
documents the ties connecting Venezuela’s right-wing coup-makers, Latin American
reactionaries and the bipartisan rulers of the world's most powerful government.
https://socialistworker.org/2019/02/26/the-empire-behind-the-coup





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[Marxism] Confront Imperialism and Don't Make Concessions: A Conversation with Nestor Kohan (Part 1)

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14346


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[Marxism] Inside the Neoliberal Laboratory Preparing for the Theft of Venezuela's Economy

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14337


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Re: [Marxism] What Happened to the Struggle for Socialism in Latin America?

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Maduro is the "counter-revolution." Today's "choice is between several 
imperialisms — the U.S. and Guaidó, Russian and China with Maduro."

What shit!! But thanks for reminding us, Lou, what an ignoramus Gonzalez is.

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis 
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2019 7:33 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] What Happened to the Struggle for Socialism in Latin America?

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Mike Gonzalez interview:

"Chávez was anti-capitalist in his discourse, but never had an 
anti-capitalist strategy. Expropriations were purchases and often in 
reaction to the disinvestment or flight of a specific capitalist."

https://truthout.org/articles/what-happened-to-latin-americas-socialism/

As if a strategy could have guaranteed success. Gonzalez, like his 
ideological partner Sam Farber, never consider the question of the 
relationship of class forces. If Venezuela had carried out the 
wide-scale nationalizations of the Cuban revolution, it would have faced 
sanctions, subversion and even military intervention that make the last 
5 years look small-scale by comparison. Cuba was able to survive because 
it had the backing of the USSR.

The simple truth is that Venezuela, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and any other 
peripheral society cannot survive on their own in a world where 
capitalist property relations prevail

The only way a "socialist strategy" might have worked in Latin America 
was if if it had been continent-wide in the same way Simon Bolivar had 
led. That would have required a different kind of leadership in Brazil 
than the Workers Party that was spineless.

It is easy for people like Gonzalez, Farber, et al to review what 
happened in Venezuela or Cuba like they were reviewing a movie. Let them 
go out and make their own. It ain't easy. I say that as someone who was 
deeply involved with Nicaraguan solidarity in the 80s and saw a country 
incapable of resolving contradictions of the kind that Marx referred to 
in the 18th Brumaire:

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; 
they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under 
circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The 
tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains 
of the living."
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Re: [Marxism] Marea Socialista

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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This interview was published more than three years ago. Note the date: April 15,
2016. Perhaps useful some background information, but seriously outdated. For
one thing, Marea Socialista split between its pro-Chavista and anti-Chavista
leaders.

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Anthony
Boynton via Marxism
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2019 1:21 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Marea Socialista

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https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11933
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Re: [Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Report from Venezuela

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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This is a "party" that adheres to the political current led by the former 
Moreno PST based in Argentina.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partido_Socialismo_y_Libertad

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of John 
Reimann via Marxism
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2019 11:12 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Report from Venezuela

Here is a reprint from an article by the Party for Socialism and Liberation
in Venezuela. I don't know all the ins and outs of the different socialist
groups in Venezuela, but this article seems pretty close to reality there.


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Re: [Marxism] There’s a Voice Missing in Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma”

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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A similar take on Roma, along with some other films of 2018...

21 Dec 2018
The Globe and Mail 

For women in film, 2018 was a year of dirty laundry
By Kate Taylor

Movies such as Roma aim to celebrate their female characters, but can’t escape 
the limitations of being told from a male perspective

 Alfonso Cuaron’s black-and-white drama Roma stars Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo, a 
housekeeper in 1970s Mexico, and is dedicated to Cuaron’s childhood nanny, 
‘Libo.’ The film is visually exquisite and Oscar-worthy, but it fails to fully 
examine Cleo – or Libo’s – life experience.

As the year draws to a close, I have been catching up with the rave reviews of 
Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, the black-andwhite drama based on the director’s 
memories of Mexico City in the 1970s and dedicated to “Libo,” his childhood 
nanny. Focused on the stoical Cleo, the hardworking Mixtec housekeeper and 
caregiver for a family of six that is coming apart at the seams, it’s visually 
exquisite, a shoo-in for the best-foreign-language Oscar, and a film sure to 
reinvigorate complaints that subtitled movies are so seldom nominated for best 
picture.

But as critics discussed the almost mystical imagery surrounding the 
self-sacrificing Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), who proves ready to risk her life for 
her employer’s children in the film’s melodramatic climax, I found few reviews 
that echoed my own reactions. I can be a literal-minded viewer and couldn’t 
help noticing that nobody in this household ever walks the dog– and that in 
Mexico in 1970, domestic labour was apparently so cheap that upper middle- 
families had maids rather than washing machines.

There is an early scene in Roma in which Cleo climbs to the roof to scrub the 
laundry by hand and we see other maids, on neighbouring rooftops, doing the 
same, hanging the clothes to dry in the sun. The youngest of the family joins 
the servant and, annoyed a this older brother over a gunfight game gone wrong, 
plays at being dead. To coax him out of his sulks, Cleo joins him and the two 
lay together on a skylight, faces to the sun. “I like being dead,” Cleo says.

Writing on that scene in a sensitive review in The New Yorker, critic Anthony 
Lane commented on the nanny’s empathetic ability to enter the child’s 
imagination. I had taken her devotion to her charges for granted; my main 
reaction was that her remark indicated this was probably her first and only 
chance that day to put her feet up. Few reviews of Roma dwell on the exhausting 
domestic labour Cleo performs, giving Cuaron a pass as he idolizes his own 
servant in a way that exalts her without fully examining her experience.

Cleo was but one of 2018’s magical nannies; the other was Mary Poppins in a 
rather different but no less popular outing. Whether they were maids, 
mistresses or monarchs, there were many powerful female protagonists on film 
this year, from the deceptively self-effacing literary spouse Glenn Close 
played in The Wife to Saoirse Ronan’s fiery title character in Mary Queen of 
Scots. Hollywood wisdom has long held that male characters are safer bet sat 
the box office because men prefer male stories while female audiences will come 
along for the ride. In November, however, a study sponsored by the U.S. talent 
agency Creative Artists busted that myth, finding that from 2014-17 movies of 
all budget levels with a female lead actually generated more money at the box 
office. In 2018, as women turned criminal in action movies such as Widows and 
Ocean’s 8, there was a strong sense that female was the flavour of the year – 
but, of course, both those titles were directed by men.

In September, accepting an Emmy for directing Transparent, the TV show’s 
creator Jill Soloway issued a call to “Topple the patriarchy!” That slogan is 
actually a movement Soloway has launched, and if you check out its website, 
you’ll be surprised by its demands: that no men be allowed to make movies or TV 
shows (or any other art form) for 50 years. It’s more a political provocation 
than a practical suggestion. The point is that the forms, the images and the 
vocabulary of what we see on our screens have been shaped by an overwhelmingly 
male creative class to the point where it may be very difficult for other 
creators to imagine their own ways of seeing and telling within that system.

The manifesto also oversimplifies authorship: Auteur theory to the contrary, 
most movies aren’t made by a single (male) genius.

Take two recent girl-power art films as examples. The revisionist Mary Queen of 
Scots is based on a script written by a man (Beau Willimon) from a book written 
by a man (John Guy), but the film is direc

Re: [Marxism] Hannah Arendt | Kanopy

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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For another view (indirectly) on Arendt and her "banal" view of Eichmann, watch
The People vs. Fritz Bauer, now on Netflix. 

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2018 12:24 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Hannah Arendt | Kanopy

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Watch film about Hannah Arendt for free. Kanopy.com offers German films 
streaming for free. I have parricular interest in the film since two of 
the characters--her husband Heinrich Blucher and Hans Jonas, a one-time 
friend who broke with her over her relationship to Heidegger and her New 
Yorker articles on Eichmann--were my professors at Bard and the New 
School that I was pretty close to.

https://www.kanopy.com/product/hannah-arendt-1

My review of the film:

https://louisproyect.org/2013/05/21/hannah-arendt/
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[Marxism] Nicaragua, April 2018 - Right-wing coup or popular revolt?

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Dick Nichols, in a 40-page report available on the Links web site
(http://tinyurl.com/yapj5z4a), conducts an exhaustive investigation into the
claims by the Ortega-Murillo regime that it was the target of a planned coup
attempt in April. He concludes:

"In the absence of evidence corroborating the Nicaraguan government's view of
the events of April as an attempted coup it will become increasingly difficult
to avoid the conclusion that the events of April were a peaceful protest that
state repression transformed into a citizen rebellion against the repression
itself and for the democratic replacement of the government implementing it.

"If this shortfall of corroborating evidence continues, the initial decision of
the Nicaraguan government to repress the protests, finalised by the "clean-up"
(limpieza) carried out in June and July, would make its view of the protests as
a coup instigated by the Nicaraguan right and the United States indispensable
for it - not as any description of reality but as justification of its own
choice to crush dissent with lethal force."

Valuable reading for anyone seeking the truth about what really happened in
Nicaragua. Dick confines his analysis to the April protests and subsequent
explanations by the regime attempting to justify its repression. For background
reading on the nature of the Nicaraguan government, I recommend Dan La Botz's
"What Went Wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution" (Haymarket), especially his
detailed account of Nicaraguan politics and the political corruption of the
Ortega leadership since the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990.

Richard

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[Marxism] FW: The Lesson of Brazil (Pierre Beaudet)

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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<http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-lesson-of-brazil.html> 

Pierre Beaudet, an editor of Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme, is a long-standing
member of the International Council of the World Social Forum, which first met
in 2001 in Porto Alegre, just a year before the Workers Party (PT) was elected
to the presidency of Brazil. The WSF has met almost annually since then in
Brazil and occasionally in other countries. Prof. Beaudet wrote this article the
day after the October 28 election of the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro as
president of Brazil, winning 55% over the PT’s 45%. It was first published in
Presse-toi à gauche. A shorter version was published in Le Devoir. My
translation. – Richard Fidler

* * *

The Lesson of Brazil

By Pierre Beaudet

The catastrophe — expected and foreseeable — has happened. This immense country,
with its 200 million inhabitants, is now in darkness. At best, it will take a
decade or two to emerge.

The ‘Colombian model’

It is of course very early to predict what will happen, but the election of the
fascist Bolsonaro raises two possibilities. The “optimists,” if one can put it
that way, think that a kind of Colombian-style regime will emerge:
authoritarian, militarized, using targeted repression against certain sectors of
the popular movement with the consent if not support of a vast sector of the
middle and popular classes. In Colombia, under Álvaro Uribe’s rule, the state
was reinforced and restabilized, benefiting from the militarist excesses of the
FARC. Today, Colombia emerges as a small regional power with a façade of
democracy, a fragmented opposition, and a solid alliance between the various
reactionary factions, not to mention the unfailing support of the United States.
In that country they assassinate, kidnap, destroy the opposition, but they leave
it a small place in a well-organized system that rules out any change. Has
history come to an end in Colombia? Of course not, it never does. Also, Brazil
is not Colombia. The popular movement did not become militarized. It still
enjoys broad electoral support (45% of the votes), foundations in the
institutions, states (provinces) and municipalities. All that cannot be
destroyed overnight. However…

The pessimistic scenario

Bolsonaro expresses the hope of sectors that are truly fascist, not only
authoritarian. The president-elect said it himself, he wants to “exterminate”
the left. Which could mean several things, such as a “purge” of the public
service, education and the cultural milieu, as the Turkish dictator has done in
his own way. But there is worse yet. In the Brazilian case it will be necessary
to break vast popular movements, including in the first place the powerful
landless peasants movement, the MST. For three decades this movement has sunk
roots in various rural sectors, with an organized network of establishments,
cooperatives and institutions. Although not obtaining the agrarian reform it
sought from its allies in the Workers Party (PT), the MST has established itself
in some regions as a mini “state within the state,” with hundreds of thousands
of members. Bolsonaro has said he will “clean them up” with the support of the
powerful agrobusiness sector, local notables and popular sectors fueled by junk
media and the evangelical churches. The MST, which fortunately has never toyed
with the militarist option, will have a hard time withstanding the shock, unless
other popular sectors join with it to build a sort of anti-fascist front. For
the moment, that’s unlikely. The trade-union movement, including the CUT, which
gave birth to the PT, is virtually paralyzed, in large part by the frontal
assault on the workers in recent years and the impact of “globalization.”
Reorienting toward primary resource extraction and agrobusiness, Brazilian
capitalism concluded that a working class organized in industry and public
services was due for slaughter.

Full: http://tinyurl.com/yb5r6o4e



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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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In answer to Tim Nelson, I tried to indicate some of the particular
circumstances behind the initial steps that led to QS in my comment concerning
Mark Lause's post:

"But this is the result of a long process that began about 20 years ago, when
some survivors of the old Trotskyist and “Marxist-Leninist” (Maoist) groups of
the 1970s began to get together and discuss how to build a new broad left party.
Over the next few years they reached broad agreement to put aside old doctrinal
differences of 20th century socialism and to focus on a few key programmatic
themes: feminism, left pluralism, opposition to global imperialism, and, not
least, in the Quebec context support for Quebec national independence from the
Canadian state (an intellectually liberating concept as it freed their thinking
from the restrictions imposed by the existing constitutional division of
powers). This could not have occurred until the dominant pro-independence party,
the Parti québécois (PQ), had become widely discredited as a result of its
implementation of capitalist austerity while in government and its failure to
win majority support for independence in the 1995 referendum.

"Crucially, the regroupment process sought ways to build alliances with the
existing social movements, especially the women’s movement (still relatively
strong at that time in Quebec, where the world march of women began) and the
“altermondialiste” (global justice) movement. More recently the fight against
climate change has become a dominant theme."

Although the Trotskyists had supported Quebec independence, the much larger
forces in the various M-L (Maoist) groups did not and they went into crisis
after the 1980 referendum; their opposition to feminism was another major factor
in their demise. The best elements in these groups learned the lessons and by
the mid-1990s saw the strategic advantage in promoting independence and
supporting the women's movement which was very active at the time. The crisis of
the Parti québécois acted as a detonator of the movement to build a left
political alternative.

As to Louis's suggestion of a march on Washington, below, I would add: And why
not propose a wide-open (or possibly delegated) conference in conjunction with
such a march, in which the various participants could attempt to identify and
begin to define some key objectives and demands around which a radical
anti-systemic political alternative might be built, and set up a representative
steering committee to pilot the project in coming months? That was how the
antiwar movement functioned best in the Sixties. I participated in some of those
marches and conferences, in which the various options for action were debated
and next actions were adopted (remember Fred Halstead taking on people like
Frank Emspak in a memorable debate at a conference in Washington, around 1965).
Those were heady days!

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2018 2:12 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

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On 11/2/18 1:45 PM, Michael Meeropol via Marxism wrote:
> RIGHT NOW -- we have a reason for a sustained movement -- resistance to
> Trump and Trumpism, resistance to revived out-there racism and the
> xenophobia that permits too many Americans to buy Trump's bullshit about an
> "invasion" --- that sustained resistance has got to continue -- and the
> coalition is very broad, including people we might otherwise want nothing
> to do with (remember "war criminals for peace" who joined the anti-Vietnam
> War coalition when Nixon was President!!) --- but that sustained movement
> (which will be with us through 2020 and maybe [gasp!] 2024) might be
> another 1970s moment to contemplate.

I think a united front against Trump is absolutely necessary but in 
bringing up the Vietnam antiwar movement that I was deeply involved with 
from 1967 to 1973 as an SWP member Michael points in the direction of 
what is needed today.

A mass demonstration in Washington is urgently needed to bring together 
every activist group and segment of the population they fight for. A 
million people will have much more impact than anything. I am not even 
arguing against DSA or whoever trying to get Democrats elected. People 
have made up their mi

Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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" Québec solidaire can be traced back to small, far left groups.  There were 
years of slogging before they got where they are today.  That, I think, is a 
lesson that can be taken from the Quebec experience."

Ken misses the point. The breakthrough in Quebec came in the late 1990s when 
the "small, far left groups" realized the need to stop slogging on their own, 
to rethink the question of how to build an effective party of the left, to set 
aside largely irrelevant or untimely differences and to single out key 
forward-looking themes around which to unite and reach out to broader forces.

Richard

-Original Message-

Ken Hiebert replies:
I read Richard’s reports on Quebec, and in particular Québec solitaire, with 
great interest.  And I expect others do as well, but I wouldn’t be surprised to 
learn that while they take heart from his reports they also feel that the 
situation is so different in their own country, that they can’t see how to 
apply the lessons of Quebec.
I will concede that there is insularity in English Canada. But even if in 
English Canada we are closer to the experience in Quebec, it also seems 
somewhat remote from what we confront in our own part of the country.

Speaking from a distance, I would still like to contribute to the discussion in 
the US.  If we are to make a break from the Democratic Party, it must start 
with the limited forces we now have.  The first initiatives will be small and 
have a modest impact.  Is there another way to break with the Democrats?  
Should we wait?  What would we be waiting for?  Inaction on our part only 
reinforces the hegemony of the Democratic Party.

Québec solidaire can be traced back to small, far left groups.  There were 
years of slogging before they got where they are today.  That, I think, is a 
lesson that can be taken from the Quebec experience.



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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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"We would also raise the need for Ocasio-Cortez, or any socialist, to use their
position to help develop a clear program that goes beyond reforms and poses a
clear alternative to the dysfunctional capitalist system. This is an important
part of building the socialist movement because again and again she will be
pressured to moderate her positions by defenders of capitalism. If she does,
this can lower the confidence of working people to fight for even modest
reforms. By outlining a bold vision for socialist transformation she can help
politically prepare a new generation for what will be needed: taking the biggest
500 corporations into democratic public ownership and rebuilding society on the
basis of democratically planned economy that puts human need before corporate
greed.

"Ocasio-Cortez will undoubtedly play a positive and important role by providing
a contrast to spineless corporate Democrats, but it's highly unlikely that
Ocasio-Cortez would take the approach proposed above. We outline it here to
raise the sights of our readers and explain a Marxist vision for the kind of
movement needed along with what role an elected socialist could play."

<
https://www.socialistalternative.org/2018/10/04/ocasio-cortez-provide-bold-lead-
socialists-elected-office/>


-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Mark
Lause via Marxism
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2018 2:59 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Cc: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

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SAlt?  Say it ain't so . . . . :-)

I saw a video of them singing "the Internationale" at their convention.
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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Oops, the references to 1972 and 1976 below should be, of course, to 2002 and 
2006. Guess I am still living in the 20th century.

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Richard 
Fidler via Marxism
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2018 9:58 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

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Thanks, Mark. 

 

It strikes me that “independent political action” in the US at present comes 
down to a largely ideological action – small sects running candidates in their 
own name hoping to attract some individuals to their “party,” or simply 
commenting from the sidelines. Perhaps that is all that is possible at this 
time, as you may be suggesting. Obviously, in Quebec (not in Canada as a whole, 
unfortunately) we are in a much more favourable position. Québec solidaire is a 
party with a much more developed program than anything you have in the USA, and 
is certainly much more influential than the DSA or any of the sects. 

 

But this is the result of a long process that began about 20 years ago, when 
some survivors of the old Trotskyist and “Marxist-Leninist” (Maoist) groups of 
the 1970s began to get together and discuss how to build a new broad left 
party. Over the next few years they reached broad agreement to put aside old 
doctrinal differences of 20th century socialism and to focus on a few key 
programmatic themes: feminism, left pluralism, opposition to global 
imperialism, and, not least, in the Quebec context support for Quebec national 
independence from the Canadian state (an intellectually liberating concept as 
it freed their thinking from the restrictions imposed by the existing 
constitutional division of powers). This could not have occurred until the 
dominant pro-independence party, the Parti québécois (PQ), had become widely 
discredited as a result of its implementation of capitalist austerity while in 
government and its failure to win majority support for independence in the 1995 
referendum.

 

Crucially, the regroupment process sought ways to build alliances with the 
existing social movements, especially the women’s movement (still relatively 
strong at that time in Quebec, where the world march of women began) and the 
“altermondialiste” (global justice) movement. More recently the fight against 
climate change has become a dominant theme.

 

Then they began a few electoralist experiments – a candidacy against the PQ 
prime minister, in which their candidate (Michel Chartrand, an old 
social-democratic leader) got about 18% of the vote, and most successfully in 
2001 in a Montréal by-election where their candidate (a leader of a short-lived 
municipal workers party in the early 1970s) got 24% of the vote. This led to 
the formation of a “union of progressive forces” (UFP) in 1972, followed in 
1976 by a merger with a coalition of feminist and community-oriented social 
movements to form Québec solidaire. 

 [snip]


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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Thanks, Mark. 

 

It strikes me that “independent political action” in the US at present comes 
down to a largely ideological action – small sects running candidates in their 
own name hoping to attract some individuals to their “party,” or simply 
commenting from the sidelines. Perhaps that is all that is possible at this 
time, as you may be suggesting. Obviously, in Quebec (not in Canada as a whole, 
unfortunately) we are in a much more favourable position. Québec solidaire is a 
party with a much more developed program than anything you have in the USA, and 
is certainly much more influential than the DSA or any of the sects. 

 

But this is the result of a long process that began about 20 years ago, when 
some survivors of the old Trotskyist and “Marxist-Leninist” (Maoist) groups of 
the 1970s began to get together and discuss how to build a new broad left 
party. Over the next few years they reached broad agreement to put aside old 
doctrinal differences of 20th century socialism and to focus on a few key 
programmatic themes: feminism, left pluralism, opposition to global 
imperialism, and, not least, in the Quebec context support for Quebec national 
independence from the Canadian state (an intellectually liberating concept as 
it freed their thinking from the restrictions imposed by the existing 
constitutional division of powers). This could not have occurred until the 
dominant pro-independence party, the Parti québécois (PQ), had become widely 
discredited as a result of its implementation of capitalist austerity while in 
government and its failure to win majority support for independence in the 1995 
referendum.

 

Crucially, the regroupment process sought ways to build alliances with the 
existing social movements, especially the women’s movement (still relatively 
strong at that time in Quebec, where the world march of women began) and the 
“altermondialiste” (global justice) movement. More recently the fight against 
climate change has become a dominant theme.

 

Then they began a few electoralist experiments – a candidacy against the PQ 
prime minister, in which their candidate (Michel Chartrand, an old 
social-democratic leader) got about 18% of the vote, and most successfully in 
2001 in a Montréal by-election where their candidate (a leader of a short-lived 
municipal workers party in the early 1970s) got 24% of the vote. This led to 
the formation of a “union of progressive forces” (UFP) in 1972, followed in 
1976 by a merger with a coalition of feminist and community-oriented social 
movements to form Québec solidaire. 

 

Since then QS has sought to operate as both “a party of the ballot-boxes and 
the streets” (the expression first popularized in France by the Ligue 
communiste révolutionnaire), although there is a strong pull toward electoral 
action as the priority. The party’s elected members see themselves as 
parliamentary spokespersons for the social movements, but QS still has to 
define more clearly how to work in conjunction with the broader social 
movements.

 

There is much more to be said, of course, and I have tried over the years to 
document and analyze this process for a non-Quebec English-speaking left 
audience. But I often wonder if a somewhat analogous process might be possible 
south of the border. You certainly have many mass protest movements, but as you 
say they tend to be one-off single-issue and “punctual” efforts, without 
sustained existence. However, the recent rapid growth of the DSA suggests there 
is an appetite for something more permanent and positive, even if its 
“socialism” is largely undefined. You also have an intellectually productive 
left judging from the materials often referenced on Marxmail (Counterpunch, 
Truthout, etc.) and of course the remnants of some 20th century sects such as 
the ISO or Against the Current. So far you lack (as do we in English Canada) 
some agglutinizing influence that could initiate a broader regroupment process. 
In Quebec this existed largely because of the Québécois national question and 
its radicalizing influence on young people. (This was completely misunderstood 
by the sole article Jacobin published on the recent Quebec election campaign.)

 

I’ll leave it there, for now. But as I say I think there is much the US (and 
Anglo-Canadian) left could learn from the Quebec experience. The language 
difference complicates this, of course. But that can be overcome with a little 
effort.

 

Richard

 

From: Mark Lause [mailto:markala...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 10:07 PM
To: Richard Fidler; Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] D

Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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This is a recurring discussion on Marxmail and on any number of left web sites 
at least once every two years in line with the US elections calendar. How do we 
build a mass left party in the mighty USA? May I modestly suggest you look at 
some nearby examples in other countries for some ideas on how this might be 
done. As it is, I think the US left suffers as much as the Anglo-Canadian left 
from its insularity. 

I posted this month two articles to this list that just might have some 
relevance to your dilemma, and as usual when I post such items they met with no 
comment and to my knowledge no interest. But I think some of you might find it 
useful to look a little more closely at a phenomenon right on your doorstep, in 
Quebec. Here, once again, are those articles. A search of the Marxmail archives 
would reveal much more. Or, for my pieces alone, a search of my blog: 
http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/. Just look for "Québec solidaire." Every 
national experience is unique, sui generis. But some generalizations are 
possible, if we probe deeply enough. And there is much to learn from each.

http://tinyurl.com/y9b44aqr
and
http://tinyurl.com/y897vb7z

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of John 
Reimann via Marxism
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 2:41 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

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This thread has evolved into a discussion on the alternatives to the
Democrats and how that might develop. I believe one way it could develop is
for local movements to throw up candidates for local office, with such
candidates running on an explicitly anti-Democratic/Republican Party
platform and linking up the local issues with the need for a working class
party. I would like to point out that that is starting to happen - halfway.
We have had:


   - Nikita Oliver run for mayor of Seattle in 2017. Oliver has been active
   in various protest movements in Seattle for years.
   - Sarah Morken run for city council in Tacoma in 2017. Sarah has been
   active in the 15 Now campaign and various other protest movements in that
   city.
   - Cat Brooks running for mayor in Oakland at present. Cat is one of the
   most prominent figures in the equivalent of the Black Lives Matter movement
   in this city.
   - Noonie "Belden Man" Batiste running for congress in New Orleans.
   Noonie has been very active in the housing rights campaigns in that city.
   - Last but not least, Cliff Willmeng running for Boulder County (CO)
   commissioner. Cliff is probably the foremost radical anti-fracking activist
   in Colorado. I did an interview with Cliff here
   

   .

In several of these cases, such as Cat Brooks, the campaign is far from
clear about the necessity to break from the Democrats and build a working
class alternative. The campaign of Nikita Oliver has led to the formation
of a "People's Party", but it's far from clear how this "party" differs
from the Green Party.

Well over a year ago, a small group of us submitted a proposal to the East
Bay DSA chapter that we initiate a discussion within the chapter about
running our own local candidates on the basis described above. Predictably,
the chapter leadership nixed the idea. Instead, they and it seems DSA as a
whole have simply become the mobilizers for various liberal Democrats who
happen to call themselves "democratic socialist". But I do think that
potential for local candidates is there.

We should also keep in mind that a working class party does not necessarily
have to emerge through running candidates. It could emerge by coordinating
the movement in the streets and work places and in the unions too. There is
the potential for such a movement to develop around the issue of voter
suppression. Unfortunately, nobody on the left is really making much of an
issue of this. That leaves it up to the Democrats, who are channeling
everything into legal challenges. We saw how great that worked with the
election of George Bush!

Finally, as far as the Greens and the Peace and Freedom Party: I don't see
the Greens as being filled out by any significant sector of workers. So I
think it will remain stagnating in its swamp. As far as P&FP, they hav

[Marxism] FW: Québec solidaire prepares to confront a new government of austerity and social and ethnic polarization

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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http://tinyurl.com/y897vb7z

Québec solidaire’s 10 members of the National Assembly, elected October 1, took
their oath of office on October 17 in two parts.

The oath of allegiance to the Queen, required by the British North America Act
(now the Constitution Act) in order to take their seats in the Assembly, was
conducted behind closed doors, presided over by the secretary of the Assembly.

In a public ceremony held in the former chamber of the Legislative Council (the
appointed upper house abolished in the 1960s) the 10 MNAs pledged their “real”
loyalty “to the people of Quebec.” Then, to the acclaim of many supporters of
Quebec sovereignty, both QS and non-QS, they promised to introduce a bill to
abolish the oath to the Queen, described by the party’s co-leader Manon Massé as
“anti-democratic” and “archaic.”

Although symbolic, it was an auspicious gesture reflecting Québec solidaire’s
determination to present a real progressive alternative to the new government of
the Coalition Avenir Québec, sworn into office the following day.

A repositioning of Quebec’s economic elite

Winning 37.4% of the popular vote — 25.8% of the eligible electorate, given the
high abstention rate — the Coalition Avenir Québec holds 74 seats, a comfortable
majority of more than 60% of the 125 in the National Assembly. Once again, the
undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system produces a result quite
unrepresentative of the voters’ choices. Doubts are widespread, therefore, that
the CAQ will adhere to its pre-election pledge to institute some form of
proportional representation which, had it applied to the October 1 results,
would have held it to minority government status. There is less doubt, however,
about how the CAQ will use its parliamentary majority to implement its
unabashedly pro-business and ethnically divisive program.

Founded seven years ago, the party is an amalgam of former Liberal and PQ
supporters assembled around a core element, the former right-wing Action
démocratique du Québec (ADQ), which split from the Quebec Liberal party in the
early 1990s in the wake of the demise of the Meech Lake attempt at
constitutional reform. It supports some vaguely articulated form of Quebec
autonomy but not independence. The CAQ is very much the instrument of François
Legault, a former Parti québécois minister and before that a prominent
businessman, founder and CEO of Air Transat. He personally selected the party’s
candidates. At least 32 of the party’s deputies — 43% of its caucus — are from
the business and managerial milieu.[1] And well over half of Legault’s cabinet,
announced October 18, are business people or journalists in mainstream or
business media.

The party is the product of a repositioning of the nationalist sector of
Quebec’s economic elite after the narrow defeat of the 1995 referendum on
sovereignty, writes Bernard Rioux, an editor of the left-wing on-line journal
Presse-toi à gauche. Successive PQ leaderships led the way, postponing their
hopes for a sovereign Quebec to an indefinite future while aligning their party
increasingly with neoliberal globalization, support of free trade and
privatization of public enterprises, establishment of fee-based public services,
reduced taxation of the wealthy, continued exploitation of fossil fuels and
concentration of media ownership. Legault, having abandoned the PQ, simply
aligned his new party with the federalism of the vast majority of the Québécois
bourgeoisie, which sees the Quebec government as its prime instrument for
gaining a strengthened role within the Canadian ruling class and through it with
global capitalism.

Full: http://tinyurl.com/y897vb7z



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[Marxism] FW: Solidaires Score Important Breakthrough in Quebec Election

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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https://socialistproject.ca/2018/10/solidaires-score-important-breakthrough-in-q
uebec-election/
or
http://tinyurl.com/y9b44aqr


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[Marxism] OECD report shows carbon pricing a failure

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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The OECD's 2018 survey of effective carbon rates (the sum of taxes and
cap-and-trade permits that price carbon emissions) implicitly admits that carbon
pricing is a failure as an effective mechanism to fight climate change. Based on
the record in 42 OECD and G20 countries, the "carbon pricing gap" between actual
prices and the Paris summit benchmarks for limiting emission increases to 2% is
"decreasing, but at a snail's pace."

"If the decrease were to continue by 1 percentage point a year, the gap would
close by 2095. Carbon prices need to increase considerably more quickly than
they have done in recent years in order to ensure a cost-effective low carbon
transition."

"The carbon pricing gap varies considerably across countries. The higher the
gap, the more likely it is that mitigation efforts are not cost-effective or
remain limited" and the country "will face higher transition costs." The lowest
gap is Switzerland's (27), the highest is Russia's (100). Canada's carbon
pricing gap is tallied at 65, just a bit better than the USA's 75.

http://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/effective-carbon-rates-2018-brochure.pdf

Richard

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[Marxism] Harvard's billion-dollar farmland fiasco

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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https://www.alainet.org/es/node/195306

One of the world’s major buyers of farmland is under fire for their involvement
in land conflicts, environmental destruction and risky investments.
A new report by GRAIN and Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos presents,
for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of Harvard University’s
controversial investments in global farmland. (in English)


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[Marxism] In memory of Fred Feldman (John Riddell)

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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In memory of Fred Feldman
(Including: A guide to Fred's online writings)

By John Riddell

Fred Feldman, a widely respected socialist activist and long-time leader of the
U.S. Socialist Workers Party, died August 25, 2018. An accomplished and
influential writer, Fred had fallen silent in recent years due to ill health.
Fortunately, most of his texts are online and easily accessible. A guide to his
writings is provided below.

Back in the early sixties, as a student activist, Fred was often arrested during
the Freedom Rides for Black human rights.  In 1964, Fred supported the
Socialists Workers Party (SWP) presidential campaign against L.B. Johnson and
Barry Goldwater. He soon joined the SWP. He wrote voluminously for SWP
publications, mostly on international issues, and served for many years as a
full-time volunteer on the staff of its publications and of Intercontinental
Press/Inprecor.

Full: http://tinyurl.com/y7cr9sm2




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Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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You are right about the Trotskyist parties' dogmatic adherence to a literal 
understanding of the Russian revolution experience. 

An exception: the US Socialist Workers Party in the late 1970s and early 1980s 
began to rethink these questions around their analysis of what they considered 
a transitional phase of "workers and peasants/farmers government." They were 
influenced in this by a re-examination of the Cuban experience and of course 
what they were following in Nicaragua, to which they gave close attention. 

However, they still saw the transition from the intermediary w and p government 
to a proletarian dictatorship (workers state) as occurring quite rapidly, which 
led them in the latter years of the Sandinista revolution to impose an analysis 
on Nicaragua that bore a curious resemblance to the permanent revolution 
template they claimed to have rejected. See their Central Committee's balance 
sheet of the Nicaraguan experience, which in my opinion is based on a set of 
hypothetical possibilities for deepening the revolution after the peace accord 
with the Contras that was quite unrealistic -- based in part on my own 
observations during an extended stay in Nicaragua in 1987. (The Militant, 
September 7, 1990 - it's online at http://themilitant.com/, Click on Search and 
follow the leads.) But by 1990 the SWP as a whole was a mess and incapable of 
serious theoretical debate and understanding, for reasons that have been amply 
explored on this list in the past.

For a more balanced assessment, see the final chapter (epilogue) in Matilde 
Zimmermann's excellent book, Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan 
Revolution, published in 2000. Zimmermann, a former vice-presidential candidate 
of the SWP in the 1970s, worked in the Managua bureau of The Militant during 
the 1980s. She long ago left the SWP and now pursues an academic career, I 
believe.

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:l...@panix.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2018 1:25 PM
To: Richard Fidler; 'Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition'
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

On 9/5/18 1:07 PM, Richard Fidler wrote:
> Actually, Trotsky did generalize his theory in the late 1920s in the book
> Permanent Revolution.

Trotsky wrote: "Does this at least mean that every country, including 
the most backward colonial country, is ripe, if not for socialism, then 
for the dictatorship of the proletariat ? No, this is not what it means."

My statement is based on what Trotsky wrote: "Does this at least mean 
that every country, including the most backward colonial country, is 
ripe, if not for socialism, then for the dictatorship of the proletariat 
? No, this is not what it means." My experience is that just about every 
Trotskyist party did not grasp what Trotsky wrote here and particularly 
when it comes to Nicaragua.


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Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Actually, Trotsky did generalize his theory in the late 1920s in the book
Permanent Revolution. The problem is that the general thesis -- that "only the
workers and peasants will go all the way," as Sandino and Carlos Fonseca, the
Sandinistas' founder, put it, tells us nothing about immediate tasks upon the
seizure of power, or the tempo of the revolutionary process. That depends
entirely on many factors, both domestic and international, and above all the
development of mass consciousness in the given state.

The Sandinista leaders were influenced by the Cubans, above all. But the context
of their revolution was very different. Nicaragua lacked the profound historic
anti-imperialist traditions of Cuba. Its workers movement was smaller and had no
Marxist traditions. The Soviet bloc (with the exception of Cuba) was not
interested in providing anything like the material support and solidarity Cuba
enjoyed in the early 1960s, crucial to Cuba's survival and radicalization in the
conflict with the USA. Nicaragua was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, while in
Cuba the clergy was foreign-dominated (Spanish and Canadian origin) and widely
discredited by its integration with the landlord-bourgeois oligarchy. And so on
and on...

The Sandinistas can hardly be compared in any significant way with Mugabe or
Assad or many other nationalist leaders. The FSLN had a socialist project, but
in the given conditions (especially the contra war) had to make many retreats
and concessions. And of course they made many errors, some of which (e.g.
Atlantic Coast) they corrected, although perhaps too late. And they did not even
have a real party, or a party congress, until 1991 after their electoral defeat.
By then the cadre had been worn down, the masses were demoralized and simply
wanted peace. Ortega built his personal domination on the ruins of the FSLN
strategy and program of the 1980s. It's just that many of us (Lou included,
apparently) failed to pay much attention to Nicaragua after 1990 until we were
rudely awakened by the state repression of mass democratic opposition this year.

BTW, it is worth consulting the UN Human Rights inventory on the Nicaragua
repression, as it stood in mid-August:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/08/1017992. The full report is hyperlinked in
the first sentence.

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2018 11:32 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

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On 9/5/18 11:23 AM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:
> How has the colonial revolution degenerated so much? Isn't what we're
> seeing visible proof of the theory of permanent revolution? After all, the
> leadership of none of these revolutions linked the colonial revolution with
> the overthrow of capitalism itself.

Permanent revolution? Nicaragua?

Trotsky's theory is a product of his study of the Russian 
class-struggle. He did not develop it as a general methodology for 
accomplishing bourgeois-democratic tasks in a semi-colonial or dependent 
country. He was instead seeking to address the needs of the 
class-struggle in Russia. In this respect, he was identical to Lenin. 
They were both revolutionaries who sought to establish socialism in 
Russia as rapidly as possible. Their difference centered on how closely 
connected socialist and bourgeois- democratic tasks would be at the 
outset. Lenin tended to approach things more from Plekhanov's "stagist" 
perspective, while Trotsky had a concept more similar to the one 
outlined by Marx and Engels in their comments on the German revolution.

Trotsky sharpened his insights as a participant and leader of the 
uprising of 1905, which in many ways was a dress-rehearsal for the 1917 
revolution. He wrote "Results and Prospects" to draw the lessons of 
1905. Virtually alone among leading Russian socialists, he rejected the 
idea that workers holding state power would protect private property:

"The political domination of the proletariat is incompatible with its 
economic enslavement. No matter under what political flag the 
proletariat has come to power, it is obliged to take the path of 
socialist policy. It would be the greatest utopianism to think that the 
proletariat, having been raised to political domination by the i

Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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The key word of course is "maintains." That is, no major difference from the 
record under previous governments.

As to upholding a government because you can see no progressive alternative, 
isn't that the same argument used by "anti-imperialists" in Syria: that if 
Assad is overthrown, it will just mean placing ISIS, or Russia, or USA, or 
Turkey -- who else?  -- in charge. Better to support the monkey than the 
organ-grinder. In Nicaragua, the reality is that Ortega has removed from 
contention one opposition group after another, and barred the road to the 
emergence of a progressive alternative. Such an alternative is more likely to 
emerge from a powerful grassroots opposition movement that has managed through 
its own efforts to overthrow an autocratic regime.

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:l...@panix.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2018 11:48 AM
To: Richard Fidler; 'Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition'
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

On 9/4/18 11:20 AM, Richard Fidler wrote:
> Earlier today, Lou posted a reply to an article in the Scientific American by 
> a
> critic of Nicaragua's environmental abuses. It is worth reading the article 
> that
> is the target of the author, Paul Oquist: Nicaragua's Acions Cast a Shadow 
> over
> Its Leadership of Major Climate Group,

It is also noteworthy that the Scientific American article states:

Nicaragua maintains a “policy of permanent destruction of natural 
resources,” according to an e-mailed statement from environmental 
scientist Jaime Incer Barquero, who directed the country’s Ministry of 
Environment and Natural Resources during the presidency of Violeta 
Chamorro in the 1990s.

---

Maybe most people reading the article have no clue what was happening 
under Violeta Chamorro but citing the head of the Ministry of 
Environment and Natural Resources is rather disingenuous. Everybody is 
ready to see Daniel Ortega overthrown but until the student movement 
puts forward a program that makes clear its opposition to him being 
replaced by the gang that ran Nicaragua before Ortega's reelection, 
count me out of the Dan La Botz brigades.


 From Environmental Justice: International Discourses in Political 
Economy, edited by Paul Thompson, 2002:

Although having adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, successive 
former Presidents Violeta Chamorro and Arnoldo Aleman showed a 
willingness to sacrifice environmental quality, worker health and 
safety, and decent wages and social services in favor of "structural 
adjustment" and neo-liberal economic policy. Private investment in 
resource extraction is being encouraged. In 1996, the Ministry of 
Environmental and Natural Resources (MARENA) and President Aleman 
granted Solcarsa, a subsidiary of the giant Korean-based multinational 
corporation Kumkyung, a 30-year timber concession covering 62,000 
hectares in the Autonomous North Atlantic Coast Region (RAAN)—the 
largest and longest ever granted in Nicaragua's history. The logging 
inflicted enormous damage on indigenous communities and the second 
largest rainforest in the Americas, and was a clear violation of 
Nicaragua's laws against mahogany exports and the right of the region's 
indigenous peoples to determine the use of local resources under the 
1987 Autonomy Law (the logging concession was later declared 
unconstitutional in February of 1997 by the Supreme Count of Nicaragua 
on the grounds that it violated Article 181 of the Constitution). 
Although the concession was revoked in late February 1998 because of 
local and international protests, another concession was granted to a 
"new company" PRADA two months later.

Government-owned industry and natural resources have been privatized, 
and new laws allow foreign interests 100 percent owner-ship of 
Nicaraguan companies. As a result, Canadian companies practicing 
open-pit gold and copper mining (which uses cyanide leaching to remove 
the precious metals from ore), are now creating severe environmental and 
human health problems throughout the country. Although some 
environmental programs will be maintained, it appears likely that the 
more comprehensive environmental programs initiated under the Sandinista 
government (and which do not receive external funding) will continue to 
be dismantled until there is a change in power. And in the wake of the 
devastation wrought by Hurricane Mitch, there will undoubtedly be 
increased exploitation of natural resources to generate foreign exchange 
and rebuild the 

Re: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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What has shocked so many -- especially those of us who were active in the
international Sandinista solidarity movement in the 1980s -- is the wave of
repression unleashed by the Ortega-Murillo regime since April 19. Never before
in Latin America has a government claiming to be on "the left" turned its police
(and, in Nicaragua, paramilitaries and sharpshooters) on peaceful, unarmed
demonstrators in the streets --  shooting hundreds, wounding thousands, even
denying them hospital care. 

Louis, in his rambling early attempt to figure out what was happening, cited
below, simply avoids referring to the initial repression, which in subsequent
weeks escalated until the Nicaraguan government itself now admits to some 230
deaths (overwhelmingly non-police), while independent human rights organizations
have documented more than 400. This balance sheet itself -- and the whitewashing
of it by the "oficialista" left (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc.) on the usual
pretext that the US must be behind it -- calls for serious reflection about the
state of the left today not only in Nicaragua but throughout the region. As Lou
demonstrates in his own reactions, we are facing here some of the same
conflicting reactions that we saw in the initial responses internationally to
the Assad regime's violent suppression of the popular protests in Syria.

Earlier today, Lou posted a reply to an article in the Scientific American by a
critic of Nicaragua's environmental abuses. It is worth reading the article that
is the target of the author, Paul Oquist: Nicaragua's Acions Cast a Shadow over
Its Leadership of Major Climate Group,
http://tinyurl.com/ybf9akgq.

As a quick google search reveals, Oquist apparently hires himself out as a
scientific "advisor" to poor countries in the Central American-Caribbean region.
In Nicaragua, Ortega has even given him cabinet rank. At the Paris climate
summit in 2016, where he represented Nicaragua in place of Ortega who couldn't
be bothered attending, Oquist cast the lone vote against the final accord saying
it did not go far enough. However, when Trump later pulled out of the agreement
Ortega decided to sign on to it, and with Syria's recent adhesion only the
United States lies outside of it.

But Oquist is not just an expert on climate change and environment. He is a
vocal defender of the politics of Ortega-Murillo. For example, take a look at
his defence of the regime in a two-part interview on Democracy Now: 
Extended Conversation with Nicaraguan Government Minister Paul Oquist on
Escalating Crisis
http://tinyurl.com/yc7qsmjp

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2018 10:07 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/04/nicaraguan-contradictions/
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[Marxism] Background on Nicaragua events

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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There are now many informative and critical reports in Latin America on the
Nicaraguan repression since April, and even a fair amount in English. 

Here is a useful report on the Ortega-Murillo regime by Trevor Evans, for years
an economic advisor to the Nicaraguan government:
The Family-Party-State Nexus in Nicaragua,
https://socialistproject.ca/2018/05/family-party-state-nexus-in-nicaragua/

This recent report by Dan La Botz has some update material, and cites US
government statements that indicate the evolution of Washington's reaction to
the Ortega repression, and why it does not call overtly for the overthrow of the
regime.
Nicaragua's Popular Rebellion Stopped -- For Now


La Botz's book What Went Wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution: A Marxist Analysis,
published in 2016 (pb in 2018), but before the recent repression, contains a
very informative account in its final chapters of the devolution of the
Sandinista party since its 1990 electoral defeat, although I don't agree with
some of La Botz's theory on the origins of the Sandinista errors during the
revolutionary government of the 1980s.

Here is an update (with links to earlier accounts) on the state of the protest
movement and government attempts to suppress it:
The Crimes of the Regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo
http://tinyurl.com/ycl2rskt

Richard


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[Marxism] The Nicaraguan Crisis and the Manicheanism of the US Left

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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https://www.alainet.org/es/node/195088

By William I. Robinson, a long-standing critical Marxist analyst of Latin
American political economy in recent decades. For an account of the violent
repression of opposition protests by the Ortega-Murillo regime, don't miss the
article by Mary Ellsberg, linked by Robinson in his last paragraph:


Although the Ortega-Murillo regime was defended by the recent Foro de São Paulo
meeting in Havana of left parties and governments, the repression in Nicaragua
has provoked a number of statements in condemnation from a wide range of Latin
American left opinion. Here are two examples. Note the signatories, many of them
prominent Marxists and anti-imperialists.

Declaración urgente por Nicaragua, https://vientosur.info/spip.php?article14022
Solidaridad con el movimiento popular nicaragüense, http://tinyurl.com/ydzx23dq

Richard


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Re: [Marxism] Infiltrating the Left

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Aaron J. Leonard says:

"Malinovsky is referred to by Lenin in "Left Wing Communism: An Infantile
Disorder." Lenin says, on the one hand, Malinovsky sent thousands of committed
Bolsheviks to prison and death. On the other, tens of thousands were recruited
to the party. He's a template for why we don't need to worry about informants.
He's on the central committee of the Bolshevik Party. He's their representative
on the international. He is one of three people charged with ferreting out spies
in the Bolshevik Party. Yet he's an informant.

"Lenin saw in Malinovsky what he wanted to see: a working class guy who was an
intellectual and was willing to fight for the cause. [...]

"If Malinovsky actually did more good than harm for the Bolsheviks because he
was a good party member as well as an informant, then by that logic, let's have
twenty Malinovskys. Maybe we ought to just have all police informants because
then, jeez, we can seize state power. The logic does not hold."

This is stupid. First, what did Lenin write?

"While Malinovsky with one hand sent scores and
scores of the best Bolsheviks to penal servitude and to death, he
was obliged with the other to assist in the education of scores and
scores of thousands of new Bolsheviks through the medium of the
legal press."

"Scores and scores," not "thousands." And Lenin adds, in a footnote:

"Malinovsky was a prisoner-of-war in Germany . When he returned to Russia
under the rule of the Bolsheviks, he was instantly put on trial and shot by our
workers. The Mensheviks attacked us most bitterly for our mistake in allowing
an agent-provocateur to become a member of the Central Committee of our Party .
But when, under Kerensky, we demanded the arrest and trial of Rodzyanko, the
speaker of the Duma, because he had known even before the war that Malinovsky
was an agent-provocateur and had not informed the Trudoviks (peasant deputies .-
Ed.] and the workers in the Duma of this fact, neither the Mensheviks nor the
Socialist-Revolutionaries in Kerensky's cabinet supported our demand, and
Rodzyanko
remained at large and went off unhindered to join Denikin."

Much more could be said about this incident;see, for ex., Victor Serge's
account in " What everyone should know about repression,"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1926/repression/ch1a.htm#s8, Chapter
VIII.

In the interests of historical accuracy, at the very least,
Richard


-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2018 7:50 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Infiltrating the Left

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https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08/fbi-infiltration-new-left-aoki-sds
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[Marxism] U.S. dairy farmers look to supply management, as Trump urges Canada to kill it

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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In the U.S. dairy heartland, where low prices are forcing farm after farm into
bankruptcy, many producers are embracing supply management as a potential
saviour

TOM BLACKWELL   Updated: July 25, 2018
Edmonton Journal

WASHINGTON, D.C. - It's a favourite grievance in President Donald Trump's
Twitter blasts at his northern neighbour: "Canada is charging massive Tariffs to
our U.S. Farmers . Canada has treated our Agricultural business and Farmers very
poorly."

The source of Trump's ire is the supply-management system that controls milk
production in Canada and limits imports from the U.S.; America's NAFTA
negotiators want it dismantled.

Even in Canada, critics view supply management as an anti-competitive tool that
artificially inflates consumer prices, while other trading partners have also
complained.

But in the United States' troubled dairy heartland, where low prices are forcing
farm after farm into bankruptcy, many producers have taken a much different view
lately - they're actually embracing supply management as a potential saviour.

Representatives of the Ontario dairy marketing board toured Wisconsin in March
and Michigan last month, drawing hundreds of farmers eager to learn how the
system works. More trips are planned for later this year to Ohio and
Pennsylvania.

Full: http://tinyurl.com/yczplk4f


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[Marxism] FW: Revisiting the theory of super-exploitation

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2018/06/revisiting-theory-of-super-exploitation_2
8.html
or https://tinyurl.com/y8cwcaoh

As part of his critical assessment and updating of the Latin American dependency
theory pioneered by Brazilian Ruy Mauro Marini,[1] Argentine economist Claudio
Katz analyzes a major component of that theory, the concept that waged workers
in the peripheral nations of global capitalism are “super-exploited.” He
suggests some necessary modifications of the theory in light of developments
since Marini’s day.

Marini’s thesis has been given new currency by some recent analyses of
imperialism in the twenty-first century such as John Smith’s book of the same
title.[2] Smith holds that Marini’s theory of super-exploitation is of
continuing relevance, and embraces the view that waged workers in the global
South are systematically paid below the value of their labour power, owing to
their greater oppression and exploitation. He argues that this constitutes a
third mechanism by which capital increases its surplus value, in addition to the
absolute and relative forms of surplus value analyzed by Marx.

Claudio Katz does not address John Smith’s recent book, although he cites in
places a 2010 work by Smith, listed among the references below.

Katz argues that the lower wages paid to workers in the periphery, like those of
workers everywhere, reflect the labour time that is socially necessary for the
reproduction of the labour force, but he emphasizes that this in turn is a
product of both material and subjective factors that differ depending on the
basket of goods required for workers’ subsistence in each nation (food,
clothing, housing, etc.) as well as their socially determined needs, including
rights won by the workers along with advances in productivity.

“Which goods are prioritized and which are discarded? Do these requirements
include the car, vacations and health services?” At the opposite pole, in
Bangladesh “the elementary reproduction of labour power reflects a basket of
ultra-basic consumption.” These things are not easy to quantify.

What is decisive is each country’s internal level of development and the
position it occupies in the stratifications of the global value chain, as
determined by the transfers of surplus value from backward to advanced
economies. But it remains true that although the rate of profit is higher in the
periphery, the rate of exploitation, as it is defined in Marx’s theory, remains
higher in the advanced countries at the center of global imperialism. The
“greater productivity in the metropolitan economies” co-exists with the “higher
profits derived from the prevailing brutality of labour in the periphery.”
Contrary to Smith’s thesis, there is no new mechanism for the production of
surplus value.

Katz, like Smith, notes that the shift in manufacturing toward the global East
works to increase global disparities. But he suggests that the contrast in the
value of labour power between center and periphery is mediated by the
development of what he terms “intermediate economies” like South Korea and
Brazil, their relative location in the global value chain being consistent with
the international transfers of surplus value as the main determinant of
underdevelopment. He develops this analysis in articles he has written on
another component of Marini’s thinking, the theory of sub-imperialism. More on
that later.

Claudio Katz’s article was first published on his web site as “Aciertos y
problemas de la superexplotación.” My translation from the Spanish.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

What is valid and what is problematic in the theory of super-exploitation

By Claudio Katz

SUMMARY

Marini postulated that the Latin American bourgeoisie recreates underdevelopment
by compensating for its unfavourable position internationally through
super-exploitation. He did not identify the payment of labour power below its
value with absolute surplus value or with increasing poverty.

But this sub-remuneration contradicts the logic of the labour market, which
determines the low wages of the industrialized periphery. Companies profit from
the existence of disparities in wages that are greater than differences in
productivity. The unevenness of development is highly conditioned by transfers
of surplus value to the advanced economies.

Dependency theory does not require a concept of super-exploitation that was
omitted by Marx. There are higher rates of surplus value in the center, but
greater restriction of consumption and labour stress in the periphery.

In a portrayal of generalized job insecurity, national differences in salaries
between the formal, informal and impo

[Marxism] FW: Behind Venezuela's crisis: Nature, money and modernity in a petro-state

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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https://tinyurl.com/yabrv9qy

As widely reported, Venezuela is immersed in a major economic, social and
political crisis that shows no signs of early resolution.

Among its pressing problems, says Steve Ellner, are “four-digit annual
inflation, an appalling deterioration in the standard of living of both popular
and middle sectors, and oil industry mismanagement resulting in a decline in
production.”

The report by Ellner, a long-time scholar and resident of Venezuela, is highly
recommended for its analysis of the economic situation and the constellation of
political forces, as well as the limited options facing the government headed by
Nicolas Maduro. President Maduro was re-elected May 20 with a 68% majority but
54% of registered voters abstained due to the call for an electoral boycott by
the major opposition coalition.

Compounding the country’s many home-grown difficulties, some of which were
triggered by the sharp drop in global oil prices of recent years, is the
economic war being waged internationally against Venezuela. As Ellner explains,
Washington’s hostile actions, which have escalated since Obama incredibly
labelled Venezuela an “extraordinary threat to national security” of the USA,
“have impacted the Venezuelan economy in many ways.”

The Trudeau government is playing a major role in this offensive against
Venezuelan sovereignty, its economy and political leadership. It is
participating in the OAS-sponsored Lima Group of right-wing Latin American
governments aimed at isolating Venezuela internationally. Immediately following
Maduro’s victory in the May 20 election, Ottawa slapped new sanctions on
Venezuela, accusing the country’s leaders of murders and other human-rights
abuses, and hinting that Canada might ask the International Criminal Court to
prosecute Maduro’s government.

Venezuela’s crisis — heavily impacted by the decline in state oil revenues — has
led many, including some on the left, to question the resource extraction and
export strategies characteristic in varying degrees of all the “progressive”
governments elected in Latin America over the last twenty years.

Those strategies have deep roots, however, in the history and social structures
of Latin America established by foreign conquest and occupation and as they have
evolved in the two centuries since most countries gained their formal
independence from their colonial masters.

An outstanding analysis of the 20th century background is Fernando Coronil’s
book The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela, first
published in English in 1997 and later translated into Spanish by a Cuban,
Esther Pérez. Coronil (1944-2011) was a Venezuelan anthropologist who spent much
of his academic career teaching in the United States.

Fernando CoronilA classic of Latin American economic and social history,
Coronil’s book was published by Nueva Sociedad in 2002, then reissued in 2013 by
the publisher Alfa, in Caracas. “One of the fundamental books for understanding
Venezuela,” write the editors of Nueva Sociedad in its March-April 2018 edition
(No. 274), it “helps us to advance in an analysis of current problems in
Venezuela in light of a rentier model that began in the 1930s and has lasted
under the Bolivarian Revolution, which today is facing its most critical
moment.”

The 2013 edition of the book contains a prologue by Venezuelan sociologist
Edgardo Lander, reproduced in almost its entirety in Nueva Sociedad. Published
below is my translation of Lander’s text. Where Lander quotes Coronil (indented
text), I have substituted the English text from his book, with the relevant page
references.

Coronil wrote in advance of the recent work by Marxist ecosocialists such as
Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster on the ecological content in Marx’s work,
most of which is still unknown in Latin America. One can only speculate as to
how a reading of their studies might have modified his critique of Marx’s
alleged failure to incorporate nature in his analysis of the process of wealth
creation.

A further caveat for readers in the “Canadian petro-state,” where the Trudeau
government is so committed to ecologically disastrous tar-sands extraction and
export that it has — contrary to all economic logic — nationalized Kinder
Morgan’s Canadian assets to ensure construction of the TransMountain bitumen
pipeline expansion to the west coast.

There is a fundamental difference between Venezuela, where rent from oil is the
main source of state income, and Canada with its developed manufacturing and
service sectors and diversified economy. As Trudeau says, the TransMountain
pipeline is an integral part of his government’s Pan-Canadian F

Re: [Marxism] Deciphering the Nicaraguan Student Uprising | NACLA

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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As she notes, the mass protests in Nicaragua resemble some of the popular
uprisings in the Arab Spring. She mentions Tahrir Square in 2011, but the
Nicaraguan protests, which are country-wide, more closely parallel the
"decentralized, social network-based, and horizontal social movements calling
for justice and democracy" in the initial anti-Assad uprisings in Syria. In
Nicaragua, however, the reaction has closed ranks and enlisted US and OAS
support in an effort to reach some accommodation with their erstwhile ally
Daniel Ortega.

Lacking a clear political program as an alternative to the authoritarian and
repressive Ortega-Murillo regime, the student leaders were vulnerable to
manipulation by pro-imperialist class forces, including those such as the COSEP
business interests, the Church, etc. that until recently were close allies of
Ortega. Some went to Miami where they supported threats by right-wing
Republicans to apply the Magnitsky law to Nicaragua, as the US and Canada have
already done to Venezuela.

Following a massive country-wide general strike last Thursday, June 14, in which
the business interests collaborated in an effort to regain some popular
legitimacy, the US ambassador Laura Dogu and Caleb McCarry, a representative of
the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, presented a proposal from Ortega to
the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference (CEN) and the Civic Alliance, which were
participating in an OAS-sponsored national dialogue operation. He had told the
US government he was prepared to have early elections in the first quarter of
2019, but insisted on remaining in office until then. He is also proposing
changes in Nicaragua's supreme electoral council, its Supreme Court and in some
other state institutions. 

However, even if an agreement on these or similar terms is reached, it is
unclear whether it would put an end to the popular uprising, the common demand
of which is for the removal now of Ortega-Murillo. The death toll, mainly as a
result of regime police action, is now above 175, with thousands of injured,
some of them denied public hospital access because of a directive issued by
Ortega's minister of health. Unfortunately, there is no real organized left
political opposition in Nicaragua, Sandinista dissident currents having long
been marginalized and often manifesting their own political disorientation in a
variety of relatively right-wing positions.

See the recent report by Nicaraguan sociologist Oscar-René Vargas, "Perspectivas
tras la masiva Huelga General," in Viento Sur. A French translation is available
in À l'Encontre. I am unaware of any English translation.

Richard



-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis
Proyect via Marxism
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2018 11:03 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: [Marxism] Deciphering the Nicaraguan Student Uprising | NACLA

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Lori Hanson, who co-authored this article, was one of the first 
"experts" to breathlessly hail the student protests in Nicaragua. 
Therefor her growing wariness must be taken into account.

https://nacla.org/news/2018/06/15/deciphering-nicaraguan-student-uprising
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