[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-Histsex]: Rabinovitch-Fox on Kowal, 'Tongue of Fire: Emma Goldman, Public Womanhood, and the Sex Question'
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. * -- Forwarded message -- From: H-Net Staff Date: Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 12:49 PM Subject: H-Net Review [H-Histsex]: Rabinovitch-Fox on Kowal, 'Tongue of Fire: Emma Goldman, Public Womanhood, and the Sex Question' To: h-rev...@h-net.msu.edu Donna M. Kowal. Tongue of Fire: Emma Goldman, Public Womanhood, and the Sex Question. Albany State University of New York Press, 2016. 222 pp. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4384-5973-8. Reviewed by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox (Case Western Reserve University ) Published on H-Histsex (October, 2016) Commissioned by Philippa L. Hetherington As an anarchist and a feminist who was at one point known as the "most dangerous woman in America," Emma Goldman has captivated the attention of many. Both to her contemporaries and to present-day researchers and activists, Goldman's ideology and public image have been a source of interest, debate, attraction, fear, and repulsion. Adding to the extensive scholarship on Goldman, Donna M. Kowal's book, _Tongue of Fire: Emma Goldman, Public Womanhood, and the Sex Question_, focuses on the words and rhetoric of Goldman, and especially on her approach to sexuality and women's bodies. Analyzing Goldman's ideas on women's liberation and sexual freedom as they were reflected in her writings, speeches, and media coverage of her, _Tongue of Fire_ positions Goldman as a "philosopher of gender/sex who recognized women's bodies as a focal point of sociopolitical struggle" and as a unique voice that is still relevant today (p. xvi). By exploring "the ways in which [Goldman's] public advocacy contributed to a shift of power over women's bodies" and to the reclaiming of women's sexual agency as a source of power (p. xiv), Kowal illuminates the central role that questions of sex and women's bodies played in public discourse in the early twentieth century. Kowal does not offer a biography of Goldman, so much as an analysis that situates sex and gender at the center of her activist thought and rhetoric. The first chapter situates Goldman as a unique voice in a broader anarchist milieu, showing how her ideas both corresponded to and differed from those of other female anarchists. In chapters 2 and 3, Kowal moves to analyze Goldman's arguments regarding sexual freedom and expression in more detail, as well as her critique of capitalism as an oppressive sexual system. Goldman advocated sexual freedom and choice in the realms of marriage and motherhood and viewed sexuality as a positive and empowering force, for both men and women. She rejected the moralistic view that saw women as helpless victims and instead called for women to develop sexual awareness and knowledge. Goldman viewed the devaluation of women's work as connected to their sexual expression and compared marriage to prostitution, seeing both as economic institutions that sought to oppress women. Kowal is right to observe that by defining sex as a significant social force and not as a biologically determined identity, Goldman created an opening for recognizing homosexual and heterosexual relationships equally. And indeed, Kowal's discussion of Goldman's view of same-sex relationships in chapter 2 provides some of the most interesting interpretations of her ideology. In chapter 4, which is the book's strongest, Kowal shows her skills as a communication and media scholar when analyzing Goldman's rhetoric style. Demonstrating how Goldman's challenge to gender and class conventions were expressed not only in the message she conveyed but also in how she delivered this message, Kowal shifts the attention to the importance of appearances and style in modern politics. Pointing to how Goldman "constructed a persona that was gendered in a way that intersected with her class, ethnicity, and suspect citizenship" (p. 77), Kowal's analysis offers an important contribution to our understanding of the varied ways women negotiated and defied social norms, and of the origins of modern publicity tactics and intersectional performance. By using a style that was based on authoritative tone, use of analogies, metaphors, expert testimony, deductive reasoning, and negotiation of gender norms, Goldman embodied her call for freedom and independence, agitating her listeners to embrace her anarchist message. While Kowal presents a convincing argument regarding Goldman's performance style, her argument regarding the influence of her Jewish-Russian background on her ideology is less persuasive. While Goldman certainly was aware of her Jewish heritage, given that her political development and radicalization happened while she was already in the United States, it is likely that she was influenced m
[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-German]: Burkhardt on Wackerfuss, 'Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality and Community in the Early Nazi Movement'
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * -- Forwarded message -- From: H-Net Staff Date: Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 7:02 AM Subject: H-Net Review [H-German]: Burkhardt on Wackerfuss, 'Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality and Community in the Early Nazi Movement' To: h-rev...@h-net.msu.edu Andrew Wackerfuss. Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality and Community in the Early Nazi Movement. New York Harrington Park Press, 2015. 352 pp. $35.00 (paper), ISBN 978-1-939594-05-1; $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-939594-04-4. Reviewed by Alex Burkhardt (University of St Andrews) Published on H-German (October, 2016) Commissioned by Nathan N. Orgill Soup Kitchens and Street Fighting: The Brownshirts in Hamburg There is a long tradition of scholarly inquiry into the Nazi _Sturmabteilung_ (SA), the brown-shirted paramilitary wing of the National Socialist movement that was in no small part responsible for the mayhem that descended upon the streets of Weimar Germany in its last fraught years. Pioneering work in the 1980s by historians, such as Conan Fischer (_Stormtroopers: A Social, Economic, and Ideological Analysis, 1929-35_ [1983], Richard Bessel (_Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: The Storm Troopers in Eastern Germany, 1925-1934_ [1984]), and Peter Longerich (_Die Braunen Bataillone: Geschichte Der SA_ [1989]), furnished a strong empirical base on the social background, ideological leanings, and propagandistic provenance of the Stormtroopers. More recent studies by the likes of Sven Reichardt (_Faschistische Kampfbünde: Gewalt und Gemeinschaft im italienischen Squadrismus und in der deutschen SA_ [2002]), Daniel Siemens (_Horst Wessel: Tod und Verklärung Eines Nationalsozialisten_ [2009]), and Dirk Schumann (_Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933: Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War_ [2009]) have brought the tools of cultural history to bear on Nazi paramilitarism, offering further insights into the value systems and "organisational cultures" that underpinned it. In _Stormtrooper Families_, Andrew Wackerfuss, a historian with the United States Air Force, makes a further contribution to this already extensive body of literature with a local study of the Hamburg branch of the SA. _Stormtrooper Families_ is structured into nine chapters that proceed chronologically, and it might be possible to discreetly divide the book into three sections, which deal in turn with the background, course, and aftermath of the crucial period from 1929 to 1933, when the Hamburg SA was in its heyday. The first three chapters explore the organization's prewar origins and its difficult fledgling years in the 1920s. Wackerfuss first provides a brief history of Hamburg, focusing particularly on the years before the First World War, which, he argues, were critical to the later psychological and political development of the SA. In chapters 2 and 3, he shows that the city's first Brownshirts were mainly ex-soldiers disenchanted with the Weimar Republic, but also that, before 1929, the Hamburg SA remained a vocal but numerically quite negligible factor in local politics. In the elections of September 1930, however, the Nazi share of the vote skyrocketed, and Adolf Hitler's party became a major player in national politics, signaling the beginning of the end of Germany's interwar experiment with democracy. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 focus on these last volatile years of the Weimar Republic, when the SA was at its zenith and was key to the Nazi campaign to seize power. The Hamburg SA expanded propitiously during this period, waging constant and bloody war on the streets against its political opponents, mainly the Communists. This enormous propensity for political violence is the focal point in chapters 4 and 6, which concentrate not only on the chronic, low-level conflict that was a constant feature of the SA's (and Hamburg's) makeup but also on two set pieces, the Battle of Sternschanze and the Altona Bloody Sunday, when the SA, along with the police and Communists, managed to bring virtual civil war conditions to parts of the city. Chapter 5, meanwhile, focuses more on what Wackerfuss calls "the caring side" of the SA (p. xv)--the vast social support network of soup kitchens, health-insurance schemes, and barrack-style "SA Homes" that the paramilitary organization established in the city and used to both attract and integrate members. The final three chapters focus on the decline of the Stormtroopers after Hitler became chancellor in January 1933. Though the Hamburg SA was initially in a triumphant mood and unleashed a wave of violence against its enemies in the months after the Nazi "seizure of power," it soon became a problem i
[Marxism] Gerald Horne in depth about his work
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. * Gerald Horne is the author of numerous books, including *Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic*, *Race to Revolution: The United States and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow*, *The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America*, *Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African-American Freedom Struggle*, *Negro Comrades of the Crown: African-Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation*, *Fighting in Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawaii*, and *W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography*, among others. https://www.c-span.org/video/?415064-1/depth-gerald-horne -- 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
Re: [Marxism] Socialist Alliance leader Tony Iltis's toxic propaganda
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://louisproyect.org/2016/10/21/the-numbers-game-in-east-aleppo/#comment-324138 On 10/21/16 11:13 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote: link? _ 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] question re mail etiquette
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. * in gmail there's an icon with three dots saying "show trimmed text." If you don't click it, does that mean the recipients don't get whatever is hidden? Asking obviously because of our space issues. _ 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] [UCE] Re: Socialist Alliance leader Tony Iltis's toxic propaganda
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. * link? _ 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] Socialist Alliance leader Tony Iltis's toxic propaganda
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. * While pediatric hospitals are being bombed in East Aleppo, this shameless political shyster links to an article of Kurd leader Salih Muslim on my blog that includes this: Saleh Muslim: “The humanitarian pause in Aleppo has been extended for 24 hours, as announced by Russia, that is true. Russia wants to separate civilians from Al Nusra and other terrorist organizations. But like they do the same with terrorist organizations, they are also using the civilians as a shield. But it is not easy to get the terrorists out of Aleppo. In fact, they even don’t let the civilians out”. This is the same shit you hear from the IDF spokesmen about Hamas and Gaza. It is enough to make you puke. _ 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: Ron Suny and the Marxist Commune: a Note
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. * By Peter Linebaugh http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/21/ron-suny-and-the-marxist-commune-a-note/ _ 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] Socialist Action on Libya and Syria
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. * In the latter part of his comment on my piece Socialist Action on Libya and Syria, Joseph Green says this: To return to Hiebert's critique of the 2011 article by Socialist Action, he asked how long it would take to build a revolutionary party in Libya, and said it might be decades. Here's the paragraph he is citing. This advice is not very timely. Supporters of Socialist Action know through their own experience that it takes years, even decades, to build a revolutionary party. In any case, this will not be done separate and apart from participation in the struggles of today. If there are people in Libya who wish to follow the advice of SA, how should they be relating to the struggle today? Should they be putting forward a course of action for Libyan working people? What should that be? http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2301 Of course he is free to read what I wrote and arrive at his own understanding. But his understanding and mine are different. The point I was making was a very different one. Responding to a current struggle with the timeless advice that we need a revolutionary party is not useful unless we tie it to a program of struggle in the present day. The task of building a revolutionary party is never counterposed to participating in the struggles of the present day, however limited those struggles may be. _ 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: The numbers game in East Aleppo | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
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. * Last night I attended a panel discussion on the siege of East Aleppo that left me depressed and angry, especially as its participants spelled out the terrible beating that hospitals are taking. The event started with a video narrated by Dr. Hatem who is the Director of the Independent Doctor’s Association’s Children’s Hospital. It is not easy to look at the footage of wounded children whose only offense was being forced to live in a city that Assad deemed filled with terrorists. It gave me the same sinking feeling I used to get when I worked at the Memorial Sloan Kettering cancer hospital in the 1980s. When you see a 3-year old kid walking around with a medication bag attached to his or her arm, you wonder how anybody can believe in god. After watching this video about Russian and Baathist atrocities, you can easily end up believing in the devil. full: https://louisproyect.org/2016/10/21/the-numbers-game-in-east-aleppo/ _ 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: Ai Weiwei Melds Art and Activism in Shows About Displacement - The New York Times
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. * Best to go to NY Times online to see the art. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/arts/design/ai-weiwei-melds-art-and-activism-in-shows-about-displacement.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
Re: [Marxism] Permanent revolution
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. * Here by coincidence is a new story worth mulling over in the context of the issues raised in this thread. >From Spain to China to any other number of cases, the revolution could only win over peasants by supporting the latter's demand for land - and conversely how the failure to provide such support led peasants to say a plague on both your houses. The story below describes Daesh's seizure of land or at least the profits of it in Syria for themselves. Naturally the farmers - and workers involved in ancillary sectors (e.g. distribution, processing, etc.). would resent Daesh's actions. But of course they would harbor a similar resentment against any political force seizing their land and revenue - which in fact was a huge factor in the launching of the revolution. Now of course Daesh's genocidal barbarism means that regardless of who controls the land, the peasants will never submit to Daesh for long no matter how reactionary the other side's land politics are. But regardless, the punch line is that eventually Syria's farmers and ancillary workers will demand control of, and revenue from, agriculture. https://www.newsdeeply.com/syria/community/2016/10/20/green-gold-how-isis-is-making-as-much-money-from-wheat-as-from-oil?utm_campaign=3386e08a32-Syria_Deeply_Weekly_Update_10_2110_21_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Syria+Deeply&utm_term=0_d84f3fd103-3386e08a32-117448697 _ 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] Permanent revolution
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. * Louis's summary of the historical and theoretical dilemmas is useful. re Egypt: yes, it's a bizarre concatenation of struggles, from opposing feudal/fundamentalist legacies to combating capital whether state- or privately-owned. That's a particular variant of combined and uneven development. I just finished several chapters in Joseph Daher's fantastic new book on Hezbollah. He details the party's ties to particular wings of capital, and how that leads it to oppose or even help crush workers' struggles. Here too it would be interesting to theorize the combined and uneven development reflected in that situation - but there is NO question that only the workers will carry all aspects of the revolution through to the end. Which is why I get angry at Joe, because he (and Sam Hamad) want only democratic demands addressed (and not very far even on those in Sam's case, who's OK with the Ikhwan having restricted them). _ 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] Socialist Action on Libya and Syria
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. * Andy is correct at least with regards to permanent revolution. The characterization by Green of Permanent Revolution is like a middle-school text book definition. The *program* of Permanent Revolution to the degree as it's advocated and not just, as many Trotskyists project, simply an analytical took to prognosticate the course of a future revolution, is closer to Andy's interpretation. All these revolutions *start as democratic ones* (struggles for actual democracy against dictatorship, land reform, national liberation,etc). All Permanent Revolution says/advocates/predicts is that in order to actually *achieve* those democratic *tasks* it will take the complete overthrow of he existing capitalist regime and the installation by the working class of Workers Government. That's it. There are none, ZERO, preconditions about who or whom to support in achieving this except that to go "all the way", again to achieve the reason people were rebelling in the first place, means to break with the capitalists *politically* who may be part of the initial phases of the revolution and keep the working class independent. But that latter point is on us, not the masses themselves. Problems of Permanent Revolution: it was poorly written. It was overly prognostic in it's structure (not unlike Lenin's writings as well in some cases). It has zero to really say about *how* to conduct a struggle for national liberation other than emphasis on the building the Communist Party. There is not enough or very little about the national liberation stage of the revolution and the tactics and strategy to be used in leading such a fight. And Trotsky did talk about 'stages'. Trotsky rejected, however, the *mechanical application of stages* implied in Lenin's writings (such as in Two Tactics for Social Democracy) but rather emphasized there is no "iron wall between stages" and one 'stage' dynamically flows into the other as dictated by the course of the revolution. It takes a revolutionary party that understands this dynamic to insure the completion of the democratic revolution by way of a working class victory. Also not talked about is the issue of Imperialist intervention because it assumes that all such struggles are anti-Imperialist and the lines are clearly drawn which, of course, is not always the case. David Walters _ 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] Permanent revolution
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 important and unresolved theoretical issues in the exchange between Andrew Pollack and Joseph Green. Specifically, there are differences within Marxism, and in particular within its Trotskyist or semi-Trotskyist wing, over how to theorize the "bourgeois revolution". For the Brennerites, there is no such thing. For Neil Davidson, and those that agree with him like me, there is. But if there is, what are its dynamics in the epoch of imperialism? Did Mustafa Kemal carry out a bourgeois revolution? Was the Arab Spring a kind of bourgeois revolution? I should add that Davidson rejects the term bourgeois-democratic revolution that was used consistently by Lenin. Even more problematic is the term democratic revolution. When the Arab Spring was likened to the 1848 uprisings in Europe, was there a failure to come to terms with exactly what had happened during Marx and Engels's time? It was clear that the democratic struggles were aimed at removing the remnants of feudal forms but did that relate to the revolutionary uprisings against someone like Mubarak who was the chief executive of Egypt's military-industrial complex? Furthermore, if we conceptualize the bourgeois revolution as a struggle against feudal remnants, how do we reconcile that with a struggle whose front-line fighters support to some degree or another a religious state? Is the demand for Sharia law simply a reactionary longing for the distant past? The Middle East and North Africa has a way of defying formulas that developed in European Marxism. For example, Omar Mukhtar led a heroic struggle in Libya against Italian imperialism as a leader of the Senussi movement. Its goal was to preserve Sufi values and its social base was Bedouins. Not exactly the same thing as Garibaldi. _ 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] Socialist Action on Libya and Syria
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. * Sigh... I feel like I'm playing whack-a-mole. Here we are again with Joe Green misrepresenting/misunderstanding/maliciously lying about/displaying his ignorance of (you all tell me which one) permanent revolution. The point of permanent revolution is to grasp the INTERTWINING of the democratic and socialist revolutions, which MEANS at EVERY STAGE supporting EVERY democratic demand, and NEVER abstaining from a democratic struggle no matter how long it takes to reveal its dialectical connection to the class struggle. And in practice EVERY MENA Trotskyist group in the revolutionary socialist tradition has done exactly that. ALL the groups which have issued joint statements, contributed to al-Manshour and Permanent Revolution journal etc., have theorized and acted in a way that bears NO relationship to Green's malicious caricature. Keep on trying to derail the class struggle, Joe, it won't work. _ 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: “YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION: American Artists and the Communist Party” Exhibition
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[Marxism] Fwd: “13th”
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. * Great documentary on the prison-industrial system by the director of "Selma" now available on Netflix. http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/21/13th/ _ 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] Pennsylvania Professors Dig In for a Long Fight
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. * Chronicle of Higher Education Pennsylvania Professors Dig In for a Long Fight By Peter Schmidt OCTOBER 21, 2016 MILLERSVILLE, PA. As a faculty strike at Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned colleges entered its second day on Thursday, some professors and students were voicing concerns about the possible consequences of a prolonged walkout. Above, faculty members from Millersville U. picketed in nearby Lancaster, Pa., on Wednesday. At noon Thursday, on the second day of a statewide strike by the faculty of Pennsylvania’s state college system, the mood among roughly 80 instructors and students near Millersville University’s library turns from festive to reverent. At the urging of a professor with a bullhorn, they begin singing "The Star Spangled Banner" while facing a nearby monument to former students claimed by the Civil War, on fields such as those of Gettysburg. Like many of those that the monument honors, those picketing here have rallied behind what they portray as a noble cause — in their case, preserving the quality of higher education in their state. Underlying the celebratory mood, however, is a fear that they, too, might be in for a much longer struggle, with much more sacrifice, than initially hoped. With more than 460 faculty members here having refused to show up to teach classes on Thursday, it has become clear that most Millersville students will not be able to take classes, and most instructors won’t be collecting pay or benefits, for some time to come. “It is a huge, huge risk for me. I have four kids.” The 14-campus Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education had faced, and avoided, potential strikes by its faculty union five times in its 33 years of existence. Many here had hoped that their system would follow the lead of two of public higher education’s other giant employers, the California State University and City University of New York systems, which recently struck bargains with faculty unions whose members had authorized strikes. Instead, with contract talks having reached an impasse late Tuesday night, the 5,500-member Association of Pennsylvania State Colleges and Universities called a strike early Wednesday and, a day later, did not appear to be poised to go back to work any time soon. "You always assume the past is going to predict the present, which is a bad assumption to make," Kirsten Madden, an associate professor of economics, had said soon after the strike was called. "We did not want this," chimed in Debra Vredenberg, also an associate professor of psychology. The strike had begun Wednesday on a celebratory note, with hundreds of students marching through the campus and drivers honking their approval at the picketers. Many of those faculty members maintained a similarly upbeat tone on Thursday, but the reality of what might lie ahead seemed to be sinking in. "It is a huge, huge risk for me. I have four kids," said Aaron M. Haines, an assistant professor of biology. "It just feels like it is more real today," said an art professor who asked not to be quoted by name because she did not want her colleagues to see her as negative. The earlier enthusiasm, she said, feels "a little diminished." The state higher-education system says it has offered the faculty union all it can, especially considering that the state remains on the heels of a recession and the college system has lost about 12 percent of its enrollment over the past five years. "From our perspective, what’s made this round of negotiations much more difficult is the financial situation many of our universities are facing," Kenn Marshall, a spokesman for the university system, said in an interview Wednesday. Focus on Quality The statewide union and many of its members, however, accuse Frank T. Brogan, the system’s chancellor, of pushing an agenda that values cost savings over the good of their institutions, as evidenced by the system’s contract proposals calling for the state colleges to rely more heavily on online courses. Citing the fluid and, at times, secretive nature of the contract negotiations, they voice doubt in the system’s assertions that it has taken off the table proposals to have colleges rely more on instructors who lack doctorates or are off the tenure track. Almost without exception, the picketers interviewed here insisted that they went on strike to protect educational quality, and not in response to bread-and-butter concerns. “Many of the changes that they have proposed erode the quality of the education we are offering.” "Many of the changes that they have proposed erode the quality of the education we a
[Marxism] [UCE] A Theory of Despair? The Frankfurt School Gets a Biography
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Re: [Marxism] Socialist Action on Libya and Syria
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. * Ken Hiebert noted that Socialist Action hadn't always opposed the anti-Assad struggle in Syria, but had originally been favorable to it. In regard to this, he gave a link to an interesting criticism he had of their stand on Libya. He wrote: > > In September of 2011 I was taken aback by the SA statement on Libya and I > wrote this comment. > http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2301 > The last two paragraphs of Hiebert's comment in International Viewpoint were "The statement of September 2nd has only one course of action to propose. 'The liberation struggle in these countries also rests in the development of mass revolutionary socialist parties there,...' "This advice is not very timely. Supporters of Socialist Action know through their own experience that it takes years, even decades, to build a revolutionary party. In any case, this will not be done separate and apart from participation in the struggles of today. If there are people in Libya who wish to follow the advice of SA, how should they be relating to the struggle today? Should they be putting forward a course of action for Libyan working people? What should that be?" Now, how could Socialist Action make this sort of mistake? Well, it follows from their political program. As expressed "in a nutshell" (see https://socialistaction.org/program/ ), the following describes the only type of uprising they will support: "Permanent Revolution: This famous theory by Leon Trotsky holds that revolution in modern times, even in under-developed countries, has to be led by the working class and has to be a fully fledged socialist revolution - revolution cannot go through stages and cannot be made in alliance with any wing of the capitalist class. To be ultimately successful it also needs to be an international revolution. We believe that a successful socialist revolution will result in a workers´ government that is based on elected workers´ councils." At the beginning of the struggle in Syria, Socialist Action could convince themselves that the struggle was an anti-capitalist one, and hence presumably it would develop according to the precepts of "permanent revolution". But as the situation developed, this would become impossible for anyone who hadn't been binge drinking on dogma to the point of unconsciousness. This left four alternatives for those who maintained a Trotskyist standpoint. One could renege on support for the Syria struggle; this would give rise to changes in position such as that by "Socialist Action". It wasn't simply an accident that "Socialist Action" fell backwards. A second possibility is diehard unconsciousness, as show by the Communist Workers' Group of Aotearoa/New Zealand. It is convinced that the Syrian struggle will continue along the path of permanent revolution. Its website "redrave" declared recently that the local committes are "institutions... of workers' democracy. They are the result of proto workers communes that if joined up would be the basis for an embryonic workers' state. ... That is why our program in Syria is ... armed workers soviets everywhere!" A third possibility is to repudiate permanent revolution, but try to keep most of Trotskyism, as put forth in the important article by Assad an-Nar, "Socialism and the Democratic Wager" (see the book "Khiyana: Dasesh, the Left & the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution"). But a fourth possibility, almost universal among Trotskyist supporters of the Syrian struggle, is to fall silent on the relationship of permanent revolution to the anti-Assad struggle or the Arab Spring altogether. This allowed some activists to produce a lot of good material in support of the Syrian democratic struggle, but at the price of avoiding a very important theoretical issue and thus leaving open the possibility of future errors in judging democratic struggle. This position might be supplemented by shouting "Menshevik" at the top of one's voice against any non-Trotskyist who pointed out the incompatibility of "permanent revolution" with support for the Syrian democratic struggle. To return to Hiebert's critique of the 2011 article by Socialist Action, he asked how long it would take to build a revolutionary party in Libya, and said it might be decades. Now, from the point of view of "permanent revolution", the only thing lacking anywhere is "revolutionary leadership". But once emancipated from this standpoint, one can examine social, political, and economic factors that underlie why it might take decades to finally have the envisioned revolutionary party and its firm backing by the masses. And especi