Re: [Marxism] Question on Brenner Thesis
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Mark Lause: ‘I've raised this question myself several times and also felt like I must be missing something. ‘I've never actually gotten an answer that persuaded me that anything was at stake other than conflicting ideas of how to define capitalism.’ The debate on the transition from feudalism to capitalism is important in itself in that it rests of the ability (or otherwise) of historical materialism to explain actual historical events and processes. In addition to this, insofar as it does address ‘what capitalism is’, how it comes into being, how it operates, how it might be superseded, the debate and the issues it raises are of practical importance now for Marxists (and for people who might not think of themselves as Marxists) but who are engaged in the struggle for a better – non/post-capitalist – world. @edwardbgeorge http://readingmarx.wordpress.com/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Question on Brenner Thesis
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 12/10/14 3:41 AM, Ed George via Marxism wrote: In addition to this, insofar as it does address ‘what capitalism is’, how it comes into being, how it operates, how it might be superseded, the debate and the issues it raises are of practical importance now for Marxists (and for people who might not think of themselves as Marxists) but who are engaged in the struggle for a better – non/post-capitalist – world. I think the most forceful explanation of the political ramifications came from Brenner himself in a NLR article )even if it is totally wrongheaded), unfortunately behind a paywall. The final two paragraphs state: Most directly, of course, the notion of the ‘development of underdevelopment’ opens the way to third-worldist ideology. From the conclusion that development occurred only in the absence of links with accumulating capitalism in the metropolis, it can be only a short step to the strategy of semi-autarkic socialist development. Then the utopia of socialism in one country replaces that of the bourgeois revolution—one moreover, which is buttressed by the assertion that the revolution against capitalism can come only from the periphery, since the proletariat of the core has been largely bought off as a consequence of the transfer of surplus from the periphery to the core. Such a perspective must tend to minimize the degree to which any significant national development of the productive forces depends today upon a close connection with the international division of labour (although such economic advance is not, of course, determined by such a connection). It must, consequently, tend to overlook the pressures to external political compromise and internal political degeneration bound up with that involvement in—and dependence upon—the capitalist world market which is necessary for development. Such pressures are indeed present from the start, due to the requirement to extract surpluses for development, in the absence of advanced means of production, through the methods of increasing absolute surplus labour. On the other hand, this perspective must also minimize the extent to which capitalism’s post-war success in developing the productive forces specific to the metropolis provided the material basis for (though it did not determine) the decline of radical working-class movements and consciousness in the post-war period. It must consequently minimize the potentialities opened up by the current economic impasse of capitalism for working-class political action in the advanced industrial countries. Most crucially, perhaps, this perspective must tend to play down the degree to which the concrete inter-relationships, however tenuous and partial, recently forged by the rising revolutionary movements of the working class and oppressed peoples in Portugal and Southern Africa may be taken to mark a break—to foreshadow the rebirth of international solidarity. The necessary interdependence between the revolutionary movements at the ‘weakest link’ and in the metropolitan heartlands of capitalism was a central postulate in the strategic thinking of Lenin, Trotsky and the other leading revolutionaries in the last great period of international socialist revolution. With regard to this basic proposition, nothing has changed to this day. --- In other words, Brenner's article was an attack on the Monthly Review and everything it stood for. The article is filled with arrogant dismissals of Paul Sweezy and all the people who contributed to a third worldist orientation over the years, including Andre Gunder Frank who despite whatever theoretical differences I had with him was a revolutionary to the marrow of his bones. Meanwhile, Brenner--despite his fire-breathing radical rhetoric--urged a vote for Kerry in 2004. (http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/379) For those who have been on Marxmail for a while and the list that preceded it, you are probably aware that I became motivated to examine these issues after running into Jim Blaut, a former subscriber who died in 2000. Blaut devoted a chapter to Brenner in 8 Eurocentric Historians, the second in planned trilogy that was cut short by his death. The last installment was to be a proposal on how to do history that was not Eurocentric. Fortunately, that chapter can be read online here: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/Blaut/brenner.htm. These are the opening paragraphs: Robert Brenner is a Marxist, a follower of one tradition in Marxism that is as diffusionist, as Eurocentric, as most conservative positions. I cannot here offer an explanation for this curious phenomenon: a
[Marxism] Fwd: Charles Andrews, Senator Sanders and the Impossibility of Reviving Democratic Party Liberalism
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[Marxism] Fwd: REYHANLI, Turkey: Rebels in northern Syria say U.S. has stopped paying them | Syria | McClatchy DC
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[Marxism] Fwd: What’s Lost, and Maybe Gained, in the Collapse of ‘The New Republic’ – The Conversation - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * There are thousands of paywalled academic journals with few readers, and no shortage of profitable, thriving websites, like Vox or Buzzfeed, serving up engaging summaries of academic work. Readers in search of reviews that engage with scholarship at greater length can turn to enduring outlets like The New York Review of Books and Harper’s. Few magazines, however, still run reviews as long, or as ambitious, as those that The New Republic featured, and those that remain share its challenges, and perhaps its fate. But if new technologies are challenging old models for magazines, they are simultaneously creating new opportunities for scholars. Monographs are expensive, lecture audiences limited, and printed journals largely confined to research libraries. Review essays served a crucial role, in part, because they brought scholarship to those who could not otherwise gain access to it. The Internet makes it possible to put scholarship directly into the hands of the public. We can publish work in open-access journals, post free copies of our articles on our own sites, or write for websites with broad audiences. Digital publication has also severed the link between length and cost. Academics are free to experiment with new forms and formats, from blog posts to e-singles to digital monographs that incorporate the data, sources, or media on which they are built. There is, moreover, a demonstrated appetite for such work. JSTOR turns away around 150 million attempts to reach its articles each year. Serious, scholarly writing published without paywalls can now reach audiences larger by several orders of magnitude than can print magazines. Some digital publications succeed in bridging the gap, but with fewer established outlets, academics now shoulder more of the burden—and the delight—of sharing our work ourselves. We need not rely on sympathetic critics. We need only make our work both rigorous and engaging. full: http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/12/09/whats-lost-and-maybe-gained-in-the-collapse-of-the-new-republic/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Zero Dark Thirty was fiction in more ways than one
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Dec. 10 2014 Senate Report Rejects Claim on Hunt for Bin Laden By CHARLIE SAVAGE and JAMES RISEN WASHINGTON — Months before the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, the Central Intelligence Agency secretly prepared a public-relations plan that would stress that information gathered from its disputed interrogation program had played a critical role in the hunt. Starting the day after the raid, agency officials in classified briefings made that point to Congress. But in page after page of previously classified evidence, the Senate Intelligence Committee report on C.I.A. torture, released Tuesday, rejects the notion that torturing detainees contributed to finding Bin Laden — a conclusion that was also strongly implied in “Zero Dark Thirty,” the popular 2012 movie about the hunt for the Qaeda leader. “The vast majority of the intelligence” about the Qaeda courier who led the agency to Bin Laden “was originally acquired from sources unrelated to the C.I.A.'s detention and interrogation program, and the most accurate information acquired from a C.I.A. detainee was provided prior to the C.I.A. subjecting the detainee to the C.I.A.'s enhanced interrogation techniques,” the Senate report said. On Tuesday, the C.I.A. disputed the committee’s portrayal that it had been misleading and disingenuous about the role of that program in the hunt for Bin Laden. The crucial breakthrough in the hunt was the identification of the courier, known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who was the terrorist leader’s link to the outside world from his secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. His significance gradually came into sharper focus. But the Senate report shows that the C.I.A. was already actively collecting information about him earlier than was previously known and long before it had obtained any intelligence about him from detainees in its custody. The United States had started wiretapping a phone number associated with Mr. Kuwaiti by late 2001, and as early as 2002, the C.I.A. had obtained from other sources — including reports from allies based on detainees in their custody — the courier’s alias and the fact that he was one of Bin Laden’s few close associates and “traveled frequently” to meet with him. It also had data on his age, physical appearance and family connections, as well as a recording of his voice — all of which proved crucial to finding him. It was in 2004 that the C.I.A. came to realize that it should focus on finding Mr. Kuwaiti as part of the hunt for Bin Laden, after it interrogated a Qaeda operative, Hassan Ghul, who had been captured in Iraqi Kurdistan. The report concludes that Mr. Ghul provided “the most accurate” intelligence that the agency produced about Mr. Kuwaiti’s role and ties to Bin Laden. But the report emphasizes that Mr. Ghul provided all the important information about the courier before he was subjected to any torture techniques and spoke freely to his interrogators. During that two-day period in January 2004, it said, the C.I.A. produced 21 intelligence reports from Mr. Ghul, who one officer said “sang like a tweetie bird.” “He opened up right away and was cooperative from the outset,” the officer added. In those initial interrogations, Mr. Ghul portrayed Mr. Kuwaiti as Bin Laden’s “closest assistant” and said he was always with him, identifying him as a likely courier who ran messages between Bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda. He listed him as one of three people most likely to be with Bin Laden, who he speculated was living in a house in Pakistan, with Mr. Kuwaiti handling his needs. Nevertheless, the C.I.A. then decided to torture Mr. Ghul to see if he would say more. He was transferred to a “black site” prison, where he was shaved, placed in a “hanging” stress position, and subjected to 59 hours of sleep deprivation, after which he began hallucinating; his back and abdomen began spasming; his arms, legs and feet began experiencing “mild paralysis”; and he began having “premature” heart beats. During and after that treatment, he provided “no actionable threat information” that resulted in the capture of any leaders of Al Qaeda, the report said. In its statement pushing back on the report, the C.I.A. insisted another detainee, Ammar Al Baluchi, had been “the first to reveal” Mr. Kuwaiti was a courier, after Mr. Baluchi’s arrest and subjection to enhanced interrogation techniques in May 2003. But the Senate report shows that Mr. Baluchi’s claim was not recognized as a breakthrough, in part because he recanted what he had said under torture. The report also notes that to
[Marxism] Obama Avoids Taking Sides on Effectiveness of C.I.A. Techniques
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Dec. 10 2014 Obama Avoids Taking Sides on Effectiveness of C.I.A. Techniques By PETER BAKER WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. maintains that the brutal interrogation techniques it used on terrorism suspects a decade ago worked. The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that they did not. And on that, at least, President Obama is not taking sides. Even as Mr. Obama repeated his belief that the techniques constituted torture and betrayed American values, he declined to address the fundamental question raised by the report, which the committee released on Tuesday: Did they produce meaningful intelligence to stop terrorist attacks, or did the C.I.A. mislead the White House and the public about their effectiveness? That debate, after all, has left Mr. Obama facing an uncomfortable choice between two allies: the close adviser and former aide he installed as director of the C.I.A. versus his fellow Democrats who control the Senate committee and the liberal base that backs their findings. “We are not going to engage in this debate,” said a senior administration official close to Mr. Obama who briefed reporters under ground rules that did not allow him to be identified. The written statement Mr. Obama released in response to the report tried to straddle that divide. He opened by expressing appreciation to C.I.A. employees as “patriots” to whom “we owe a debt of gratitude” for trying to protect the country after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Then he judged that the methods they used in doing so “did significant damage to America’s standing in the world.” And finally, Mr. Obama asked the nation to stop fighting about what happened so many years ago before he took office. “Rather than another reason to refight old arguments,” he said, “I hope that today’s report can help us leave these techniques where they belong — in the past.” Mr. Obama has struggled to find balance on this issue since taking office nearly six years ago. He made one of his first acts as president signing an order that banned the use of torture by the C.I.A. But he resisted pressure from activists to hold anyone accountable for the waterboarding of suspects. The Justice Department under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. re-examined cases of prisoner abuse that were previously closed under President George W. Bush, but it did not prosecute anyone. Mr. Obama rejected the creation of a “truth commission” proposed by Democrats like Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont. To this day, he has resisted releasing photographs of harsh treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan and his White House backed up the C.I.A. in seeking redactions of the Senate report. Now as president receiving regular briefings on terrorist threats and responsible for stopping them, he sees the situation differently than he did as a candidate denouncing the incumbent of the other party. In his statement on Tuesday, Mr. Obama not only did not condemn Mr. Bush for authorizing the techniques, he sounded a note of empathy. “In the years after 9/11, with legitimate fears of further attacks and with the responsibility to prevent more catastrophic loss of life, the previous administration faced agonizing choices about how to pursue al Qaeda and prevent additional terrorist attacks against our country,” he said. A major influence has been John O. Brennan, a career C.I.A. officer who has been at his side since the start of his presidency, first as his White House counterterrorism adviser and now as his C.I.A. director. Both Mr. Brennan and the president’s first C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, have taken the position, contrary to critics, that the interrogations did yield useful intelligence at points but were nonetheless wrong and that Mr. Obama was right to ban them. “Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom E.I.T.s were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives,” he said in a statement on Tuesday, referring to enhanced interrogation techniques. “The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of Al Qaeda and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day.” Mr. Brennan acknowledged that the program “had shortcomings and that the agency made mistakes,” especially because the C.I.A. was unprepared for its new post-Sept. 11 role. But he rejected the assertion that the agency deliberately deceived the public about the efficacy of the interrogations. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democratic chairwoman of the intelligence committee, said the program was not just
[Marxism] Fwd: Albert Einstein’s profound observations on entrenched racism in America - Salon.com
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[Marxism] Fwd: GMO Contamination Denial: Controlling Science
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[Marxism] Fwd: Left Unity – Why we must support a SYRIZA government in Greece
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[Marxism] Fwd: FREE EBOOK! Best of Verso 2014: From Arundhati Roy to Slavoj Zizek
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[Marxism] Fwd: Reactionaries in Space | Jacobin
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I can’t remember an apocalyptic film that’s taken less interest in this planet as it’s destroyed. You might think there’d be a sustained tribute to the lost wonders of Earth, some mourning for the mass death of animals. Just think of the centrality of extinct animals to the dystopian logic of Blade Runner. Even a piece of rote crap like 2012 devotes a scene to saving some precious creatures from Earth, a dog, an elephant, a giraffe. full: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/interstellar-review/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Wordpress.org experts?
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[Marxism] Fwd: The American Mengeles: Drs. Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell
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[Marxism] Fwd: Report Portrays a Broken C.I.A. Devoted to a Failed Approach - NYTimes.com
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * (Unbelievable shit going on, much worse than I would have believed.) At the Salt Pit, the junior officer ordered a prisoner, Gul Rahman, shackled to the wall of his cell and stripped of most of his clothing. Mr. Rahman was found dead of hypothermia the next morning, lying on the bare concrete floor. Four months later, the junior officer was recommended for a cash award of $2,500 for his “consistently superior work. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-torture-report-shows-cia-infighting-over-interrogation-program.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Sinéad O’Connor joins Sinn Féin
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Sinéad O’Connor joins Sinn Féin and calls for Gerry Adams to step down http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/dec/09/sinead-oconnor-sinn-fein-gerry-adams-resign O’Connor added: “There’d be a zillion per cent increase in membership of Sinn Féin if the leadership were handed over to those born from 1983-1985 onward and no one associated in people’s minds with frightful things. Frightful things belong where they are now, in the past.” _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: Congressional leaders hammer out deal to allow pension plans to cut retiree benefits - The Washington Post
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Reactionaries in Space | Jacobin
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * * [Marxism] Fwd: Reactionaries in Space | Jacobin * /From/: * * Louis Proyect wrote I can’t remember an apocalyptic film that’s taken less interest in this planet as it’s destroyed. You might think there’d be a sustained tribute to the lost wonders of Earth, some mourning for the mass death of animals. Just think of the centrality of extinct animals to the dystopian logic of Blade Runner. Even a piece of rote crap like 2012 devotes a scene to saving some precious creatures from Earth, a dog, an elephant, a giraffe. full: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/interstellar-review/ I have seen this film in the company of my perceptive 14-year old autistic granddaughter, whose main ambitions are to teach third grade and to go to Mars. The Jacobin article almost but not quite gets to the point of remarking that 'Interstellar' depicts human refuge in a new place without considering that they bring all of the conditioned baggage of their capitalist matrix and its ideology, with which to mess up the environment, the mode of appropriation and other aspects of their relationship to the rest of their environment in yet another venue. That includes not only the failure to bring other species or life forms, as even the bible manages, but also the method of selection, the class position and the miniscule numbers of those who do make the trip. Not a good role model for Samantha, but she does have a little help from her grandfather. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
