Re: [Marxism] Fwd: George Orwell was a reactionary snitch who made a blacklist of leftists for the British government – Medium
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Re: [Marxism] Just how many Panamanians did the US kill 27 years ago?
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[Marxism] Fwd: George Orwell was a reactionary snitch who made a blacklist of leftists for the British government – Medium
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://medium.com/@BenjaminNorton/george-orwell-was-a-reactionary-snitch-who-made-a-blacklist-of-leftists-for-the-british-government-dc66778f360e#.baxlnv686 The pinhead Ben Norton's neo-Stalinist turn is complete. He writes: "Sure, the USSR did a lot of objectionable things, but it was also the only large country in the entire world that supported the Spanish Republicans in their fight against fascism (excluding a bit of extra support from Mexico). The Soviet Union understood that one cannot have a revolution if one cannot even defeat the fascist counterrevolution first — a lesson many on the left still have not learned today." This is the same kind of logic that leads him to back Assad and Putin. Implicit in this argument is that George Orwell, who had nothing to be ashamed of when he wrote "Homage to Catalonia", was an obstacle to the Popular Front's survival and deserved the same fate as Andres Nin. I might answer this jerk if I find the time. -- Support Louis Proyect biography project https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/ _ 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] Just how many Panamanians did the US kill 27 years ago?
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[Marxism] After Trotskyism, what? Some personal thoughts
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. * (Posting the whole thing since it appeared only on FB.) ARASH AZIZI·WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2016 “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” — Karl Marx A few months ago, I left the International Marxist Tendency, an organization of which I had been a member for more than seven years. Many friends and comrades wrote to ask me to outline the reasons for this decision. I write these lines primarily for them. As someone who had recruited many to the ranks of the IMT, I felt responsible to explain why I had left it and what path do I see ahead in the fight for socialism. I don’t claim to have found a magical formula or the answer to all my questions but hope that these humble lines will be of interest to some. I should start by saying that the sad ultra-left turn that IMT has taken in the last few years surely did accelerate my decision. Abandoning of the fundamental orientation to the Labour Party in Britain (signaled by the change in the paper’s masthead) which happened to come only months before the historic election of Jeremy Corbyn; similar distancing from the traditional organizations of the working class in other countries; advocating abstention in the Brexit referendum; and the refusal to endorse Bernie Sanders’s campaign are just some examples. But it would be dishonest if I pretended that this turn was my ultimate reason and that all I long for is a pre-turn IMT or a similar Trotskyist organization. It is true that by reflection on my years of political activity, and by taking into account the developments of the last few years, I have come to the conclusion that orthodox “Trotskyism”, as we know it, is no longer the path forward for the working class and for the cause of a better world. We need new political strategies for the epoch we are in. My Trotskyist Experience When I joined the IMT in late 2008, few months after I had left my native Iran for Canada, this wasn’t out of a whim. For about five years I had been a member of WPI, an Iranian organization that could be described as belonging to the Left Communist and Council Communist tradition. I had joined it at the age of 15 for the simple reason that it was the only Marxist organization I knew that dared to organize under the authoritarian Islamist regime that reigns in Iran. As I had started a process of questioning the WPI, and as I needed a political home in Canada, I embarked on a study of international left from the times of Marx and Engels down to the currently existing international organizations and their branches in Canada. I chose IMT because it stood on unapologetic socialist politics (of much importance to me, it didn’t follow much of the international left by supporting the Tehran regime), because the Trotskyist Anti-Stalinism appealed to me, because its political strategy of working inside the NDP to win a majority for Marxist ideas in the country’s main working-class party seemed plausible and because it boasted many hard-working people who took their politics seriously. I haven’t changed my mind on any of those reasons but it is only after a sustained period that you start finding holes and problems; you can try to fix some of those problems and tolerate others (since I never believed that membership in an organization should be tantamount to agreeing with every single thing about it) but you then recognize that some of the problems are in the DNA of the group. It has inherited them from a political tradition and, unless there is a commitment on part of a significant number of its leaders, they are not going to change. What are these problems, where do they come from and how can we overcome them? Basis of unity — the problem of sectarianism Any political group has a criteria for its membership, a basis of unity that brings people together as they strive for a goal. Getting such a basis right is a difficult task and easier said than done, especially for a Marxist organization. How do you gather around the largest possible number of people possible while making sure that your group is not diluted in the goals it pursues? How can you ensure the maximum amount of discipline and seriousness in work while also letting people who can’t commit as much time or resources participate? I have always believed that this basis of unity needs to be political and around the goals that we all strive for. If people share the fundamental socialist goal (a world free of classes where production is organized on the basis of need not profit) and basic strategies and stances of a political group in any given
[Marxism] BBC Persian interview with Karim Pourhamzavi
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[Marxism] ISIS: the Middle East in the fire of the jihadists
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 friend Karim has just had his first book published. It's in Farsi, but some people here would be fluent in Farsi. http://nogaam.com/book/2100/ Pourhamzavi, Karim. (2016). *ISIS: The Middle East in the Jihadists' Fire*. Nogaam. London. Cover designer: Abdulqader Balouch. This book is the first book in Farsi which considers the jihadist groups homogeneously. The first part of the book addresses the ideology of these groups in its historical context. This starts from the 14th century when the Salafi interpretation of Islam emerged and the way it was adopted as the only and official version of understanding Islam in Saudi Arabia in early 20th century. Then it goes to 20th-century development of jihadist thoughts in places like Egypt, Afghanistan, and post-2003-Iraq. The second part addresses the emergence of the jihadist movement in the shadow of third party sponsorship such as local rulers and regional and global powers who used these movements against their rivals for economic-political gains. In the third part, the book addresses the claimed sectarian element of the conflict in the Middle East. The book suggests that a large amount of evidence indicates otherwise - the essence of this conflict is not sectarian or based on Sunni vs. Shi'a. The term sectarianism is therefore used for simplifying a much more complex reality, involving proxy wars and international adversaries over the Middle East. _ 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 petition, Christine Lagarde, and the environment
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There is currently a petition being circulated to have Congress "Demand that
IMF Chief Christine Lagarde resign or be forced from office following her
conviction in a French government corruption case". I'm not sure whether
anyone really believes that the problem with the market fundamentalist IMF is
that Lagarde is its chief, or that Congress is better than Lagarde. But
there's no harm in denouncing a bit of corruption. That aside. No doubt many
of those who are pushing the petition are supporters of the carbon tax. Yet
they are silent on the fact that Lagarde and the IMF are major backers of the
carbon tax, and no doubt the IMF and the World Bank will have a much greater
impact on how the carbon tax is implemented than ecosocialists and leftists.
What's the point of denouncing the IMF if one has the same policy as the IMF?
What's the point of having a petition on Lagarde if one doesn't denounce
Lagarde's policies? To implement Lagardism without Lagarde?
The IMF and the World Bank are committed to the use of carbon pricing as the
main tool for dealing with global warming and as a replacement for a system
of comprehensive regulation. Lagarde says so -- down with all those pesky
regulations that might otherwise proliferate! The IMF is more committed to
the carbon tax, while the World Bank would be happy to accept cap and trade.
But the important thing for them is to back carbon pricing, not a system of
comprehensive regulation and planning. In my opinion, these market measures
help pave the way for climate disaster. This is a false path, a market
fundamentalist path, for the environmental movement.
(http://www.communistvoice.org/DWV-160429.html)
Now perhaps some pro-carbon tax activists have a rationale for why it is
supposed to be correct to be on the same side as Lagarde and the IMF on the
issue of global warming and the carbon tax. But it isn't discussed. It isn't
good form to mention it. There may be indignation about Lagarde and the IMF
and the World Bank and the Washington Consensus, and the horrors their
neo-liberal policies have caused to entire countries such as Greece, but
there is silence on how it could be that Lagarde and these institutions are
supposedly correct about carbon pricing. How can it be that market
fundamentalism is a disaster for the people, but supposedly wonderful for the
environment?
Or if activists disagree with the way Lagarde and the IMF would implement
the carbon tax, well, there isn't much discussion of it. (To be precise,
everyone puts forward their own version of the carbon tax, whose supposed
simplicity is belied by so many different versions, but they do not compare
them to Lagarde's version.) If the carbon tax were being honestly discussed
in front of the working class and progressive activists, there should be lots
of discussion of whether the carbon tax proposal being put forward differs
from that of the IMF and the World Bank, and why one could imagine that one's
idea of a carbon tax, and not Christine Lagarde's, is likely to be
implemented. But one looks in vain towards the main propagandists for the
carbon tax for such a discussion. Occasionally one finds such things as James
Handley of the Carbon Tax Center lauding the stand of Christine Lagarde
("Carbon Tax Convergence, as IMF and IPCC Chiefs Speak Out", October 8, 2015
By James Handley). But in that article there is no criticism of Lagarde and
the IMF, only celebration.
In the absence of a discussion of Lagarde's and IMF policy on the
environment, or any other major issue, the critique of Lagarde may reduce to
shouting "The King is dead! Long live the King!" Only market fundamentalists
could be enthusiastic about that.
---
Joseph Green
m...@communistvoice.org
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[Marxism] Fwd: The tyrants bring the invaders | openDemocracy
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[Marxism] Fwd: YouTube star kicked off Delta Airlines flight 'for speaking Arabic' | World news | The Guardian
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[Marxism] Fwd: Best books of 2016 | Michael Roberts Blog
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[Marxism] Fwd: Aleppo has fallen: Armed Opposition Seeks to Redefine Itself (pt.2) | The Huffington Post
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[Marxism] Fwd: Aleppo has fallen: But the Conflict is Far from Over (pt.1) | The Huffington Post
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[Marxism] Statement on Assassination of Russian Ambassador to Turkey
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