Re: [Marxism] Communists and black liberation
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Again, Gerald Horne, a tenured professor that writes about black history and labor history has said something quite different from what you have. I advise you to take it up with him and do some actual scholarship. Best regards, Andrew Stewart > On Feb 20, 2016, at 5:22 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > >> On 2/20/16 4:17 PM, hasc.warrior.s...@gmail.com wrote: >> If that is the case, my discussion and research on the topic with >> Gerald Horne and several others who are involved in the scholarship >> indicated that theoretical nuances is far different than how the >> public reaction in America developed. > > This is the Marxism list. If you don't want to be criticized, don't post > links to articles that make the case for Stalin. I know that this might sound > like ancient history but I was educated in Marxism by Trotsky's bodyguard Joe > Hansen. > > Stalin's movement was based on bureaucratic fiat. The Black Belt theory > developed during the Third Period, an ultraleft disaster of biblical > proportions. In the USA it was hardly a factor in the CP's impact on American > society but in Germany it helped to lead to the rise of Nazism. > > We are still paying for the CP's mistakes. There was a basis for a working > class party in the 1930s but the CP sabotaged it because it saw the DP as a > useful ally in the popular front (until Hitler made a pact with Stalin.) What > did it mean for the CP to function effectively as the left wing of the DP > when this was essentially the party that defended slavery and Jim Crow and > whose Dixiecrat wing was never challenged by FDR? A *racist* party that the > Daily Worker extolled? > > From an interview with Ira Katzelson on his book "Fear Itself", a debunking > of New Deal myths: > > Q: Your book is very moving on what you call the “southern cage” and FDR and > the Democratic Party’s Faustian bargain with southern Democrats -- to > preserve white supremacy and segregation laws in order to pass New Deal > legislation. I think the level of racism and oppression in the south may stun > some younger readers. > > A: We might begin by recalling that in the 1930s and 1940s -- before the 1954 > Brown v. Board of Education decision -- we had seventeen states in the Union, > not just the eleven that seceded during the Civil War, but seventeen states > that mandated racial segregation. Not one representative from those states, > ranging from the most racist like Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, to the most > liberal and not racist like Claude Pepper of Florida, ever opposed racial > segregation in this period. So you had seventeen states, thirty-four United > States senators and a disproportionately large House of Representatives > delegation because seats are apportioned on the basis of population not > voters, and this was a period when the South had a very low turnout, low > franchise electorate. > > There were rules like the poll tax and literacy tests to keeps black from > voting, and those rules also kept many whites out of the electorate. So you > had a small electorate, a one-party system and therefore great seniority for > Southern members of Congress with control over key committees and legislative > positions of leadership -- that is, disproportionate power. > > And the Democratic Party in this period -- the agent of the New Deal in > Congress -- was composed of a strange-bedfellows alliance of a Northern, > principally immigrant, Catholic and Jewish, big-city, labor-oriented > political base, together with a Southern, largely non-immigrant, non-urban, > mostly Protestant, rural base. They could not have been more different in > those respects, yet together they composed the Democratic Party. To secure > party majorities for New Deal legislation, it was necessary to keep the two > wings together, which meant that the south had a veto over all New Deal > legislation. > > After 1938, the Southerners composed a majority of the Democrats in Congress > because Republicans began to make a comeback as they won Democratic seats in > the North. But [the Republicans] did not win Democratic seats in the South. > In 1940, every U.S. senator from the South was a Democrat just at the moment > when the Republicans had begun to make a comeback in the House and in Senate > seats outside the South. The consequence was that, in the 1940s, it wasn’t > just that Southern members of Congress could say no to what they didn’t like. > They actually were the authors of the preferences that shaped every single > legislative outcome in the 1940s. > > Nothing could be passed into law against the wishes of the Southern members > o
[Marxism] Fwd: Syria and the World: Reactionarism is Back, and Progressing
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The process of dynasty transition in Syria and the enslavement of the dynasty’s subjects was supported by all international powers. Not a word of objection or suspicion was heard from the democratic countries in the world, nor from the international Left. Bashar al-Assad was baptised as heir to his father by the Americans and the French, as is well-known, and by Arab states that either were already hereditary kingdoms or found in the Assad precedence something their ageing presidents would later imitate. The upheaval in Syria’s history, and what appears to be a high-speed reversal towards the past, a return to historical eras that were supposed to have ended, is not unlinked to this international patronage. That is to say, once again, that the archaic in our life is not exclusively local, or referring only to the fragility of the local new. It is the product of the global new, or what this new contains of the archaic, particularly the phenomena of clientelism, discrimination and evasion of justice. The Assads’ state has benefited from these phenomena as much as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran have. Anyone who owns a state wins, however criminal their state may be, as long as this criminality is directed only at the weak and not at the powerful. The contemporary state system is indeed the pump that drives the flow of the antiquated. I mean that all the inequality and injustice found in this world, all the violence and privilege, all the discrimination, plotting and conspiring that are characteristic of the regime are the source of what is archaic, dark and reactionary in today’s world. full: http://aljumhuriya.net/en/critical-thought/syria-and-the-world-reactionarism-is-back-and-progressing _ 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] New on Redline
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. * Tony Norfield's 'The City: London and the global power of finance' (this book comes from Tony's PhD on British imperialism today): https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/tony-norfields-the-city-london-and-the-global-power-of-finance/ Small win for the firefighters: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/small-win-for-firefighters/ This is a tiny article about a small dispute but is one of our most successful articles; when the firefighters union put it up on their facebook page, it had 7,000 views in the first 24 hours. This month marks 65th anniversary of the single most significant dispute in NZ labour history, the 1951 waterfront lockout. Our lockout material can be linked to here: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/the-1951-waterfront-lockout-began-65-years-ago-today/ Maori, identity, equity and the economy: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/maori-equity-and-the-economy/ Redliner Daphna Whitmore looks at some recent work by Ross Himona on the way in which cultural constructions are hindering the fight for the material things Maori need to improve their position Maori rich-poor divide reflects world trend: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/maori-rich-poor-divide-reflects-world-trend/ While Maori remain disproportionately poor, there is now a clearly identifiable Maori rich elite and substantial Maori middle class Building the Irish revolutionary movement: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/interview-with-john-mccusker-a-leading-figure-in-eirigi/ Resistance movements during World War 2: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/14129/ Who pays for free education?: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/02/04/who-pays-for-free-education/ And a couple of Michael Roberts' excellent pieces: New recession coming: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/new-recession-coming/ Global GDP no good news for capitalism: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/02/03/global-gdp-no-good-news-for-capitalism/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: An interview with Mary Scully, independent socialist candidate for President
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. * Well. I'll be. She used to live in my area. She ran for governor. Guess now she is now running for president . Erik Toren On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 11:16 AM Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > > > > http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=12456 > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/ectoren%40gmail.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] Fwd: Investment, investment, investment | Michael Roberts Blog
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. * You're right of course, Hans, that Roberts is trying to explain that aspect of the working of the capitalist economy that has to do more specifically with the cause of crises. The primary cause for him is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. But remediation for him does not occur under a system of capital accumulation through growth, and he is plain about that. He would agree that “productive growth”, whatever that might have entailed, has become “destructive growth.” So then, are you saying that Roberts wants “to advertise socialism as a system which allows everybody, not only the capitalists, to benefit from economic growth?” You write (attributing it to Roberts?) “..but the only way to continue growth under the capitalist regime is by lower wages and austerity.” I can’t see that Roberts would agree with that either. He sees the only solution in, as he puts it, “the end of the capitalist mode of production and the power of capital.” And that “Capitalism continues to exploit resources successfully (and rapaciously) at the cost of planet and climate” (https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2014/10/). Hans Ehrbar wrote Ralph Johansen writes about Michael Roberts: He is not discussing the deleterious effects of growth on the planet. He is attempting to explain the workings of the economy under capital. I think Michael is trying to explain the prolonged recession since 2008. His thesis is that the Marxist explanation by the falling rate of profits is the best explanation, and that even the better mainstream economists agree to it now. Since the fall of the rate of profits is the reason for this recession, it is not possible to climb out of it by giving people higher wages, but the only way to continue growth under the capitalist regime is by lower wages and austerity. Therefore if we really want recovery we must get rid of the capitalist system. Did I get this right? I have troubles following because he makes so many unstated assumptions which were familiar to me in the past but which I am thinking now are no longer valid. The argument which I just outlined makes me feel like I am in a museum because if anybody is trying to explain the economy in the year 2016, the finiteness of the planet must be part of the puzzle. I have the impression that right now this is a much stronger influence on the economy than the rising organic composition of capital. Without the finiteness of the planet, you have no hope to explain the Paris Agreement, the low oil prices, etc. And someone who has the finiteness of the planet clearly in focus will never try to advertise socialism as a system which allows everybody, not only the capitalists, to benefit from economic growth. Instead, a 21st century Marxist must explain that what looks like economic growth in the books of capitalist firms is really destruction, that natural resources are being destroyed in order to maintain the accounting fiction of growth, and that eco-socialists want more growth only in the poor countries. In the UK and US we need less growth and an economy which does not collapse if it does not grow. Hans G Ehrbar --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _ 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] Communists and black liberation
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 2/20/16 4:17 PM, hasc.warrior.s...@gmail.com wrote: If that is the case, my discussion and research on the topic with Gerald Horne and several others who are involved in the scholarship indicated that theoretical nuances is far different than how the public reaction in America developed. This is the Marxism list. If you don't want to be criticized, don't post links to articles that make the case for Stalin. I know that this might sound like ancient history but I was educated in Marxism by Trotsky's bodyguard Joe Hansen. Stalin's movement was based on bureaucratic fiat. The Black Belt theory developed during the Third Period, an ultraleft disaster of biblical proportions. In the USA it was hardly a factor in the CP's impact on American society but in Germany it helped to lead to the rise of Nazism. We are still paying for the CP's mistakes. There was a basis for a working class party in the 1930s but the CP sabotaged it because it saw the DP as a useful ally in the popular front (until Hitler made a pact with Stalin.) What did it mean for the CP to function effectively as the left wing of the DP when this was essentially the party that defended slavery and Jim Crow and whose Dixiecrat wing was never challenged by FDR? A *racist* party that the Daily Worker extolled? From an interview with Ira Katzelson on his book "Fear Itself", a debunking of New Deal myths: Q: Your book is very moving on what you call the “southern cage” and FDR and the Democratic Party’s Faustian bargain with southern Democrats -- to preserve white supremacy and segregation laws in order to pass New Deal legislation. I think the level of racism and oppression in the south may stun some younger readers. A: We might begin by recalling that in the 1930s and 1940s -- before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision -- we had seventeen states in the Union, not just the eleven that seceded during the Civil War, but seventeen states that mandated racial segregation. Not one representative from those states, ranging from the most racist like Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, to the most liberal and not racist like Claude Pepper of Florida, ever opposed racial segregation in this period. So you had seventeen states, thirty-four United States senators and a disproportionately large House of Representatives delegation because seats are apportioned on the basis of population not voters, and this was a period when the South had a very low turnout, low franchise electorate. There were rules like the poll tax and literacy tests to keeps black from voting, and those rules also kept many whites out of the electorate. So you had a small electorate, a one-party system and therefore great seniority for Southern members of Congress with control over key committees and legislative positions of leadership -- that is, disproportionate power. And the Democratic Party in this period -- the agent of the New Deal in Congress -- was composed of a strange-bedfellows alliance of a Northern, principally immigrant, Catholic and Jewish, big-city, labor-oriented political base, together with a Southern, largely non-immigrant, non-urban, mostly Protestant, rural base. They could not have been more different in those respects, yet together they composed the Democratic Party. To secure party majorities for New Deal legislation, it was necessary to keep the two wings together, which meant that the south had a veto over all New Deal legislation. After 1938, the Southerners composed a majority of the Democrats in Congress because Republicans began to make a comeback as they won Democratic seats in the North. But [the Republicans] did not win Democratic seats in the South. In 1940, every U.S. senator from the South was a Democrat just at the moment when the Republicans had begun to make a comeback in the House and in Senate seats outside the South. The consequence was that, in the 1940s, it wasn’t just that Southern members of Congress could say no to what they didn’t like. They actually were the authors of the preferences that shaped every single legislative outcome in the 1940s. Nothing could be passed into law against the wishes of the Southern members of Congress. And most things that passed into law, especially after 1938 and 1940, matched almost precisely the preferences of the Southern wing of the Democratic Party in Congress. - See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/151867 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40ma
[Marxism] Fwd: Investment, investment, investment | Michael Roberts Blog
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. * Ralph Johansen writes about Michael Roberts: > He is not discussing the deleterious effects of growth on the planet. > He is attempting to explain the workings of the economy under capital. I think Michael is trying to explain the prolonged recession since 2008. His thesis is that the Marxist explanation by the falling rate of profits is the best explanation, and that even the better mainstream economists agree to it now. Since the fall of the rate of profits is the reason for this recession, it is not possible to climb out of it by giving people higher wages, but the only way to continue growth under the capitalist regime is by lower wages and austerity. Therefore if we really want recovery we must get rid of the capitalist system. Did I get this right? I have troubles following because he makes so many unstated assumptions which were familiar to me in the past but which I am thinking now are no longer valid. The argument which I just outlined makes me feel like I am in a museum because if anybody is trying to explain the economy in the year 2016, the finiteness of the planet must be part of the puzzle. I have the impression that right now this is a much stronger influence on the economy than the rising organic composition of capital. Without the finiteness of the planet, you have no hope to explain the Paris Agreement, the low oil prices, etc. And someone who has the finiteness of the planet clearly in focus will never try to advertise socialism as a system which allows everybody, not only the capitalists, to benefit from economic growth. Instead, a 21st century Marxist must explain that what looks like economic growth in the books of capitalist firms is really destruction, that natural resources are being destroyed in order to maintain the accounting fiction of growth, and that eco-socialists want more growth only in the poor countries. In the UK and US we need less growth and an economy which does not collapse if it does not grow. Hans G Ehrbar _ 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] Communists and black liberation
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * If that is the case, my discussion and research on the topic with Gerald Horne and several others who are involved in the scholarship indicated that theoretical nuances is far different than how the public reaction in America developed. You are being tremendously combative and condescending here and I don't think that is necessary, especially considering that as a film scholar I have seen massive gaps in your criticism but don't exactly make a spectacle of it. Best regards, Andrew Stewart > On Feb 20, 2016, at 3:55 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > >> On 2/20/16 3:12 PM, Andrew Stewart via Marxism wrote: >> My latest piece on the history of the Old Left and African Americans. >> >> http://www.rifuture.org/have-a-radical-black-history-month-communism-and-black-liberation.html >> >> Best regards, >> Andrew Stewart > > Andrew, Stalin's understanding of the national question was highly > problematic as Jim Blaut pointed out in an article: > > http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/10/021.html > >Stalin put forward a fully diffusionist theory of nationalism in 1913; > ironically, his point of departure was Lenin's earlier views, before Lenin > had analyzed the dynamics of colonialism and imperialism. > >Stalin's 1913 essay, “Marxism and the National Question,” has had immense > influence on Marxism down to the present, mostly because its basic thrust is > to argue that nationalism is essentially a bourgeois phenomeno and national > movements are not, in most cases, progressive and they will not, in general, > succeed in forming new states, an argument that has almost always been used > by those Marxists who reject nationalism in general or oppose some particular > national movement (see Blaut 1987). Stalin's theory starts with the axiom > that national movements are simply an aspect of the rise of capitalism; they > are progressive only when capitalism is commencing its rise in a particular > region; they are not progressive—— are either frivolous or reactionary—in all > other circumstances. Capitalism has now fully risen, says Stalin; therefore > national movements are not progressive, although (putting forward the > Bolshevik position) the right of peoples to struggle for independence must be > recognized. This is pure Euro- Marxism. It sees capitalism as a wave > diffusion spreading out from Western Europe across the world's landscapes, > and nationalism as nothing more than a part of that diffusion;hence > as”bourgeois national- ism.” > > --- > > That does not get into the question of why so many Blacks ended up hating the > CPUSA, which involved its practice. When A. Philip Randolph began organizing > a March on Washington in 1941 to protest the KKK and demand desegregation in > the army, the CPUSA denounced him as undermining the war effort. > > The CPUSA did a lot of good things in the 1930s and 40s to fight racism but > given its bureaucratic methods and its subservience to the Kremlin, it was a > poor substitute for the kind of organizing that was necessary. > > When Malcolm X began building a Black nationalist movement in the 1960s, he > was denounced by the CPUSA for being "divisive", which was the strange > inverse of its "Black Belt" program. In the 1920s, they pushed for it despite > the lack of a mass movement for it and when Blacks began pushing for Black > control of the Black community in the mid-60s, they opposed it. > > When you keep making big mistakes like this, you lose credibility. That is > among the reasons the CP is falling apart like all other Leninist sects. > > > _ 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] Communists and black liberation
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 2/20/16 3:12 PM, Andrew Stewart via Marxism wrote: My latest piece on the history of the Old Left and African Americans. http://www.rifuture.org/have-a-radical-black-history-month-communism-and-black-liberation.html Best regards, Andrew Stewart Andrew, Stalin's understanding of the national question was highly problematic as Jim Blaut pointed out in an article: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/10/021.html Stalin put forward a fully diffusionist theory of nationalism in 1913; ironically, his point of departure was Lenin's earlier views, before Lenin had analyzed the dynamics of colonialism and imperialism. Stalin's 1913 essay, “Marxism and the National Question,” has had immense influence on Marxism down to the present, mostly because its basic thrust is to argue that nationalism is essentially a bourgeois phenomeno and national movements are not, in most cases, progressive and they will not, in general, succeed in forming new states, an argument that has almost always been used by those Marxists who reject nationalism in general or oppose some particular national movement (see Blaut 1987). Stalin's theory starts with the axiom that national movements are simply an aspect of the rise of capitalism; they are progressive only when capitalism is commencing its rise in a particular region; they are not progressive—— are either frivolous or reactionary—in all other circumstances. Capitalism has now fully risen, says Stalin; therefore national movements are not progressive, although (putting forward the Bolshevik position) the right of peoples to struggle for independence must be recognized. This is pure Euro- Marxism. It sees capitalism as a wave diffusion spreading out from Western Europe across the world's landscapes, and nationalism as nothing more than a part of that diffusion;hence as”bourgeois national- ism.” --- That does not get into the question of why so many Blacks ended up hating the CPUSA, which involved its practice. When A. Philip Randolph began organizing a March on Washington in 1941 to protest the KKK and demand desegregation in the army, the CPUSA denounced him as undermining the war effort. The CPUSA did a lot of good things in the 1930s and 40s to fight racism but given its bureaucratic methods and its subservience to the Kremlin, it was a poor substitute for the kind of organizing that was necessary. When Malcolm X began building a Black nationalist movement in the 1960s, he was denounced by the CPUSA for being "divisive", which was the strange inverse of its "Black Belt" program. In the 1920s, they pushed for it despite the lack of a mass movement for it and when Blacks began pushing for Black control of the Black community in the mid-60s, they opposed it. When you keep making big mistakes like this, you lose credibility. That is among the reasons the CP is falling apart like all other Leninist sects. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Investment, investment, investment | Michael Roberts Blog
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. * Hans Ehrbar wrote Michael Roberts seems to think "growth" is a good thing, even though our planet is finite, and Mary Scully does not say a peep about the environment, other than calling socialists who vote for the Green Party "small-minded". Reading the debates on the marxism list sometimes seem like a visit in a museum to me. Hans G Ehrbar https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/investment-investment-investment/ http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=12456 - Isn't this unfair to Michael Roberts? He is not discussing the deleterious effects of growth on the planet. He is attempting to explain the workings of the economy under capital. He is as he acknowledges single-minded in that effort and I am persuaded by it, unlike by Michael Heinrich and Michael Hudson, one of whom derides the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall for reasons still obscure to me, having to do mainly with Marx's subsequent musings after writing Cap 3 as purportedly disclosed in the new Mega mss - although Marx never explicitly repudiated as far as I know his declaration that the law was the most important one in the analysis of capital - and Hudson. who although persuasive in other respects doesn't even mention the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall from what I have read of his works, relying on Keynesian "demand" and under-consumptionism as the cause and cure of crises of capital. I don't see Roberts anywhere minimizing the dangers of environmental collapse, or implying that "growth" is a good thing. And if it's not part of his discussion, it's because it isn't germane in the context of that discussion. Louis Proyect wrote (I'll have to give this article careful attention but it would seem to me that investment is being neglected because there is no demand. Why invest in new steel mills when there is not an expanding market in the manufactured goods that are based on the output of basic industry like steel, rubber, petrochemicals, etc.?) This blog continually hammers home the view that it is investment not consumption that is the key to economic growth. Fluctuations in business investment in a predominantly business, profit-making economy decide, in the first analysis, whether output expands or contracts; whether there is a boom or slump. This view is contrary to that of Keynesian economics, which although it appears to recognise that investment plays an important role, sees investment and consumption spending (domestic demand) as driving employment, output and incomes and profit – in that order – not vice versa. full: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/investment-investment-investment/ -- it seems self-evident as a matter of first impression to me as well. But when I accept that the sole purpose in a system of capital accumulation of investment in productive enterprise is to make a profit in a manner that allows the investor to compete, reproduce and expand, it becomes plain to me that those activities will take place not in the simple presence of demand, but when production in response to that demand will produce an adequate return for the realization of return for that investor. Otherwise, he'll do something else with his capital, like invest it in fictitious, casino-type (with assured taxpayer bail-out protection in the present system, however), non-productive ventures. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _ 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] Communists and black liberation
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * My latest piece on the history of the Old Left and African Americans. http://www.rifuture.org/have-a-radical-black-history-month-communism-and-black-liberation.html Best regards, Andrew Stewart _ 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: Investment, investment, investment | Michael Roberts Blog
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. * Michael Roberts seems to think "growth" is a good thing, even though our planet is finite, and Mary Scully does not say a peep about the environment, other than calling socialists who vote for the Green Party "small-minded". Reading the debates on the marxism list sometimes seem like a visit in a museum to me. Hans G Ehrbar https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/investment-investment-investment/ http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=12456 _ 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] Remembering Frank Rosengarten
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 don't know how many people knew Frank who was a member of the SWP in the late 70s but I knew him quite well and really liked him. This is a commemoration from a couple of his colleagues in the CUNY system from the journal Socialism and Democracy (Issue 2, 2015), a journal he helped to found. 1. Michael E. Brown Frank Rosengarten and I were colleagues at Queens College from 1967 until his early retirement, which I remember asking him to reconsider in the light of what he had to offer students. By then, however, he was uncomfortable teaching and had a number of projects that he needed time to develop and complete, and I am sure that there were family considerations as well. Frank and I got to know each other during the sit-ins of 1967–69 at Queens. Both of us spoke often at meetings of students and faculty. I believe that it was at the end of the sixties that Frank interviewed me for an Italian newspaper as someone he considered to be an activist of the New Left. The result used two full pages of the newspaper, and when I look back on what I said about what inspired me as an activist, I realize that knowing Frank in the subsequent years helped my view of left politics to mature, or at least I hope it did. I was struck by his productive ambivalence toward the Communist left in the US, and by his attempt to reconcile his own political interests and dispositions with those on the left with whom he had differences of opinion. He was willing to work with them because his conception of a left was broad enough to sustain what Castoriadis referred to as the “revolutionary perspective.” I remember going to a convention of the Socialist Workers Party in the late 1970s. While I was impressed with the discussions, and found them more informed, more complex, and in some ways more open and interesting than what I saw in various meetings of the CPUSA (which I occasionally attended with friends who had remained members), I remained convinced that there were many ways of realizing a socialist vision and that the history of the CPUSA was part of all of our history and not something to be dismissed as “the old left” as my friends and comrades in SDS described it (often somewhat lovingly at any rate). I was more favorably disposed to the Russian Revolution and its long aftermath than Frank, and our discussions always left me with a greater understanding of the usefulness of ambivalence on the Left. When we began the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy, and started publishing the journal in the form of a newsletter, we thought of it as far more limited and local than it turned out to be. When we expanded it to the form of a journal, our first aim was to publish different points of view on the left, views we might have disagreed with but felt should be part of the general discussion. Our second aim was to consider methodological and theoretical problems intrinsic to the continuing debate over the Russian Revolution and the history of American Communism. Thanks to Frank's willingness to devote an enormous amount of time to building Socialism and Democracy, we found ourselves with a fine group of board members and with regular correspondents from around the world. Randy Martin and George Snedeker eventually joined us and helped assemble the papers given at our conference on the history of the CPUSA. The book we edited is still in print and remains one of the important contributions to the literature on American communism.1 Between meetings and the work involved in assembling the issues of the journal, acquiring mailing lists, and mailing it, Frank and I put in what, in retrospect, was an incredible amount of time and energy. Frank was deeply involved in everything that appeared in the journal. The two of us wrote many introductory essays to issues, and always tried to sustain a sense of dialogue on the left rather than promoting a specific line. Still, we had our own way of understanding the left, and articles written by Frank, me, and Randy reflected both our differences and how we reconciled those differences. Frank was a generous colleague, willing to discuss issues on the left at a moment's notice and with a thoroughness that one finds in all his scholarly work, which was itself of considerable importance in various areas of study. Frank was not only generous and tremendously hardworking; he was creative and able to reach out to others so that Socialism and Democracy gained a reputation as an important interdisciplinary journal of the Left. When Marie and I moved to Boston, and Frank could no longer support the journal primarily on his
[Marxism] Fwd: An interview with Mary Scully, independent socialist candidate for President
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=12456 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Investment, investment, investment | Michael Roberts Blog
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. * Regarding the strange theory that demand doesn't matter, one much consider whether investors will expand output and thus create jobs without an expectation of demand ... >From "The Engineers and the Price System," by Thorsteen Veblen "Sabotage" is a derivative of sabot, which is French for a wooden shoe. It means going slow, with a dragging, clumsy movement, such as that manner of footgear may be expected to bring on. So it has come to describe any manoeuvre of slowing-down, inefficiency, bungling, obstruction. In American usage the word is very often taken to mean forcible obstruction, destructive tactics, industrial frightfulness, incendiarism and high explosives, although that is plainly not its first meaning nor its common meaning. Nor is that its ordinary meaning as the word is used among those who have advocated a recourse to sabotage as a means of enforcing an argument about wages or the conditions of work. The ordinary meaning of the word is better defined by an expression which has latterly come into use among the I. W. W., ? conscientious withdrawal of efficiency? ? although that phrase does not cover all that is rightly to be included under this technical term. The (...) the rate and volume of output have to be regulated with a view to what the traffic will bear, that is to say, what will yield the largest net return in terms of price to the business men who manage the country's industrial system. Otherwise there will be overproduction, business depression, and consequent hard times all around. Overproduction means production in excess of what the market will carry off at a sufficiently profitable price. So it appears that the continued prosperity of the country from day to day hangs on a conscientious withdrawal of efficiency by the business men who control the country's industrial output. They control it all for their own use, of course, and their own use means always a profitable price. In any community that is organized on the price system, with investment and business enterprise, habitual unemployment of the available industrial plant and workmen, in whole or in part, appears to be the indispensable condition without which tolerable conditions of life cannot be maintained. That is to say, in no such community can the industrial system be allowed to work at full capacity for any appreciable interval of time, on pain of business stagnation and consequent privation for all classes and conditions of men. The requirements of profitable business will not tolerate it. So the rate and volume of output must be adjusted to the needs of the market, not to the working capacity of the available resources, equipment and man power, nor to the community's need of consumable goods. Therefore there must always be a certain variable margin of unemployment of plant and man power. Rate and volume of output can, of course, not be adjusted by exceeding the productive capacity of the industrial system. So it has to be regulated by keeping short of maximum production by more or less as the condition of the market may require. It is always a question of more or less unemployment of plant and man power, and a shrewd moderation in the unemployment of these available resources, a ?conscientious withdrawal of efficiency,? therefore, is the beginning of wisdom in all sound workday business enterprise that has to do with industry. All this is matter of course, and notorious. But it is not a topic on which one prefers to dwell. Writers and speakers who dilate on the meritorious exploits of the nation's business men will not commonly allude to this voluminous running administration of sabotage, this conscientious withdrawal of efficiency, that goes into their ordinary day's work. One prefers to dwell on those exceptional, sporadic, and spectacular episodes in business where business men have now and again successfully gone out of the safe and sane highway of conservative business enterprise that is hedged about with a conscientious withdrawal of efficiency, and have endeavored to regulate the output by increasing the productive capacity of the industrial system at one point or another. But after all, such habitual recourse to peaceable or surreptitious measures of restraint, delay, and obstruction in the ordinary businesslike management of industry is too widely known and too well approved to call for much exposition or illustration. Yet, as one capital illustration of the scope and force of such businesslike withdrawal of efficiency, it may be in place to recall that all the civilized nations are just now undergoing an experiment in businesslike sabotage on an unexampled scale and carried out wit
[Marxism] Fwd: Nationalism, resistance and revolution – International Socialism
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. * Nationalism, resistance and revolution by Bassem Chit The reduction of current struggles in Lebanon and Syria in particular, and across the Middle East in general, to purely abstract nationalistic, sectarian and “identitarian” dimensions is one of the dominating features of the analytical and methodical logic of the Arab nationalist and Stalinist left.1 Their analysis fails to consider the social structures involved and their contradictions, the ideological engines powering such national or sectarian identities. Nor does it take into account the crises that they experience, in particular those imposed by the revolutionary process; a process that is ongoing despite its fluctuations and fractures. The methodology of the Arab nationalist and Stalinist left sees the situation in the Middle East and in the Lebanese and Syrian region in particular, through the lens of antagonistic binaries and approaches society and its contradictions through a set of predetermined cultural and national/religious identities. Therefore we hear of “Sunni-Shia strife”, the Oriental culture, Arabs, the West, Orientalism, identity crisis, sectarian rule, Christians, Muslims, etc. According to such characterisations, these identities are treated as independent structures and established entities that interact among themselves in a relationship of convergence, divergence and struggle on the local, regional and international theatres of the shifting balance of power. The movements of the masses are therefore evaluated according to their closeness to a particular regional or international alliance and their distance from another. The “resistance” axis is said to include Iran and Syria, and is supported by Russia. An opposing “American-Zionist-Takfiri”2 axis is viewed as being backed by the US and includes regimes like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. A mass movement is subsequently legitimised or de-legitimised according to where it stands in the struggle between these axes. The ongoing struggle is pictured as a struggle between identities that are legitimised by the political language used to describe them, regardless of how genuine these entities themselves are, particularly in the face of the revolutionary transformations that govern the situation today. The Stalinist and Arab nationalist left have never seen beyond the milestone of national struggle and national liberation to which, in spite of their importance and necessity, the revolution cannot be restricted. This perspective on the revolution is invoked by the language used to describe it. Herein lies the essential problem: are we seeing the revolutionary process, on the one hand, through its actual reality, in other words through the context that gave birth to it and the contradictions characterising that context; or, on the other hand, evaluating it based on a theoretical assumption that has never been able to concede that the Arab or non-Arab individual in this region cannot be exclusively reduced to his or her national identity? full: http://isj.org.uk/nationalism-resistance-and-revolution/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: A white buddy for Miles Davis: Don Cheadle’s struggle to get “Miles Ahead” financed is absurd — and not surprising - Salon.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. * Yep, and in "Birth Of A Nation" the new movie based on Nat Turner - recently purchased for 17 million at Sundance - only men are killed by Turner's group, no women and children. On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 9:15 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > 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 had a feeling that this film would be a dud since the trailer seemed to > play up Miles Davis as violent, almost like a gangsta rapper but this is > even worse.) > > That was six decades ago, during the height of the Cold War. Earlier this > week, Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle described his decade-long struggle > to make a biopic about jazz legend Miles Davis. He raised about $360,000 > via crowdfunding, but only cleared the final financing hurdle when he wrote > in a fictional Rolling Stone reporter and cast Ewan (“young Obi-Wan”) > McGregor in the role. Interviewed at the Berlin Film Fest, where “Miles > Ahead” was screening out of competition, Cheadle said that casting a white > actor in a leading role was “one of the realities of the business that we > are in,” adding that “there is a lot of apocryphal, not proven evidence > that black films don’t sell overseas.” > > full: > http://www.salon.com/2016/02/19/a_white_buddy_for_miles_davis_don_cheadles_struggle_to_get_miles_ahead_financed_is_absurd_and_not_surprising/ > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/ernestleif%40gmail.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: A white buddy for Miles Davis: Don Cheadle’s struggle to get “Miles Ahead” financed is absurd — and not surprising - Salon.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. * (I had a feeling that this film would be a dud since the trailer seemed to play up Miles Davis as violent, almost like a gangsta rapper but this is even worse.) That was six decades ago, during the height of the Cold War. Earlier this week, Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle described his decade-long struggle to make a biopic about jazz legend Miles Davis. He raised about $360,000 via crowdfunding, but only cleared the final financing hurdle when he wrote in a fictional Rolling Stone reporter and cast Ewan (“young Obi-Wan”) McGregor in the role. Interviewed at the Berlin Film Fest, where “Miles Ahead” was screening out of competition, Cheadle said that casting a white actor in a leading role was “one of the realities of the business that we are in,” adding that “there is a lot of apocryphal, not proven evidence that black films don’t sell overseas.” full: http://www.salon.com/2016/02/19/a_white_buddy_for_miles_davis_don_cheadles_struggle_to_get_miles_ahead_financed_is_absurd_and_not_surprising/ _ 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: America Is Now Fighting A Proxy War With Itself In Syria - BuzzFeed News
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[Marxism] Fwd: Facing the Counter-Revolution: A review of Burning Country, by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami | anarchistnews.org
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'll tell you the truth. My admiration for anarchists grew exponentially since 2011. I could never deal with the black block nonsense but the anarchists were smart enough and principled enough not to carry around the "anti-imperialist" baggage. They understood the need for seeing things in class terms rather than the geopolitical chess game, bless their hearts.) Anti-authoritarians Leila Al-Shami and Robin Yassin-Kassab look back over the past fifteen years of resistance movements in Syria, to understand the anarchistic currents that emerged during the revolution that began in 2011. Although this revolution has gone farther than any other in recent memory, it is poorly understand and has received little support. With Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, the authors seek to change that. full: http://anarchistnews.org/content/facing-counter-revolution-review-burning-country-robin-yassin-kassab-and-leila-al-shami _ 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: Bouthaina Shaaban: Kurdish YPG is part of Syrian Army - Middle East Observer
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. * Bouthaina Shaaban, a senior advisor to Syrian President Bashar Assad, acknowledged the regime’s support of Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). Shaaban has described PYD as an “allied force” for the regime and voiced the government’s satisfaction with cooperation with both Russia and PYD. “The YPG Kurdish units, the armed group of PYD, are cooperating with the Syrian army and Russian air forces to clear northern Syria of terrorism.” full: http://www.middleeastobserver.org/bouthaina-shaaban-kurdish-ypg-is-part-of-syrian-army _ 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: Investment, investment, investment | Michael Roberts Blog
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'll have to give this article careful attention but it would seem to me that investment is being neglected because there is no demand. Why invest in new steel mills when there is not an expanding market in the manufactured goods that are based on the output of basic industry like steel, rubber, petrochemicals, etc.?) This blog continually hammers home the view that it is investment not consumption that is the key to economic growth. Fluctuations in business investment in a predominantly business, profit-making economy decide, in the first analysis, whether output expands or contracts; whether there is a boom or slump. This view is contrary to that of Keynesian economics, which although it appears to recognise that investment plays an important role, sees investment and consumption spending (domestic demand) as driving employment, output and incomes and profit – in that order – not vice versa. full: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/investment-investment-investment/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Asha saga
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. * Listers may know about the little refugee child , Asha, who is holed up in the hospital here in Brisbane - the Lady Cilento Hospital. The doctors refuse to release her to be returned to the refugee detention centre. She had burned herself in an accident. John has posted about this earlier. The Waterside Union -the MUA, led by a great socialist Bob Carnegie, has thrown its support behind the crowd who have gathered around the hospital in support of the doctors and Asha. , Tonight it seems the authorities intend making an attempt to seize the child. A crowd of over a thousand, very big for Brisbane, has been marshaled via the social media and the police seem stymied at the moment. I will try and get time to write a more reflective piece about all this. For the moment I will just say that I think there has been a significant shift in public opinion around the refugees. The fate of Asha seems to have struck the inner humanity of Australians and they do not want her sent back to prison. As I write this over my phone I can hear the crowd singing Amazing Grace in an effort to access their ground state of love and solidarity, as Bhaskar would have put it, in the face of the power of the State. To listen to the singing is a deeply moving and humbling experience. Perhaps we might make it as a speciesPerhaps comradely Gary _ 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
