Re: [Marxism] Amazon's robotics
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. * And then there is farm robotics https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/608847/robotic-farmers-can-literally-reap-what-they-sow/ Les _ 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] The Russian Reader: Chutzpah
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. * Thomas Campbell wrote https://therussianreader.com/2017/09/12/chutzpah/ Here’s the score, boys and girls. This is what happens, sooner or later, to everyone who has a beef, however minor, with the Putin regime. They get a visit from a “policeman” who is indistinguishable, in his behavior, looks, and speech, from an ordinary thug. For all that, justification on the ground and all that, what is the essential difference between RT, BBC and VOA? Yes, the Russian regime is from what I know everything you say it is. and which for reasons of state and economic insecurity that we could go into is, counter-productively in the long run and like most third world regimes, more repressive, corrupt and hostile to dissent than many western governments. So then how about the US regime? In terms of its relative effect on the lives or life chances of countless working class inhabitants of the planet, and its threat to the long-term viability of our species, when it threatens to spread nuclear annihilation and selective murder by drone and space technology all over the place, denies and impedes any meaningful action on climate deterioration, prevents labor mobility and rise in living standards in every corner of the globe while enhancing capital mobility without impedance to the benefit of US capital, and consumes the preponderance of the world's assets, many irreplaceable? Need I elaborate further? Have you for example in the past few days seen our media outlets' smug, self-serving coverage of North Korea, 9-11 and Hurricanes Harvey and Irma? Would you be posting, not just on VOA, but on the organs of a vicious US media conspiracy which conceals all that I describe and requires truth-seekers with vital information to resort to an outlet no less venal but open to an essential critique of US corporate and governmental actions? --- 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] The Russian Reader: Chutzpah
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://therussianreader.com/2017/09/12/chutzpah/ Here’s the score, boys and girls. This is what happens, sooner or later, to everyone who has a beef, however minor, with the Putin regime. They get a visit from a “policeman” who is indistinguishable, in his behavior, looks, and speech, from an ordinary thug. Today, it happened to my friends Lika and Alik, who are not only some of the nicest folks I’ve ever met, but run the invaluable Jewish Community Center on Rubinstein Street on a shoestring budget. Here’s what Lika wrote about their encounter with the Putinist police: I just got a visit from two plainclothes “policemen.” What was their business? Literally: “Have you been writting all kinds of crap on Facebook about wogs getting beaten up?” I am conveying what they said to me. The prosecutor’s office found your message, which you wrote one and a half years ago. We need a clarification from you. I see he’s holding printouts from the Sova Center. I told them they had woken up on time, since one and half years had passed since then. After I said that, one of the “policeman” was rude to me. “Why do you write garbage? Do you have nothing to do?” I asked him not to talk to me like that and show me his ID. He refused and behaved very aggressively. My husband tried to take his picture on the phone, but he threatened to smash the phone. He really was holding papers from the prosecutor’s office. Supposedly, they had been given three days to take care of the matter. I said I could deal with it on Friday morning. The conversation ended with our promising to call the police and closing the door. There is no doubt they were from the police, judging by their behavior.)) I am writing a complaint to the prosecutor’s office. Here is a photo of one of the “heroes.” ___ I myself just got chewed out, on a leftist mailing list, for writing a “screed” about how Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky had sold out to Putinism by appearing on RT. What is worse, the super-righteous Hedges, an ordained minister, if I’m not mistaken, has even started presenting a program on the channel. Why do I object so strongly to this? Because whether they know it or not, Hedges, Chomsky, and everyone who behaves like them is putting their stamp of approval on the way this country is misruled by thugs like the ones who just visited and threatened my friends Lika and Alik. Make no mistake: this is not a one-off, random incident. This is something that has happened millions of times, and often in much rougher form, since Putin took charge of Russia eighteen years ago. So, when you say to yourself that your “anti-imperialist” (or whatever) message is so earth-shakingly important that you’ll go on a TV channel paid for by Russian taxpayers, but run as a flagrant anti-US, anti-western, pro-Assadist, pro-Putinist propaganda outlet by thieves, crooks, and thugs who openly intimidate, assault, and sometimes murder these same taxpayers for the “criminal” act of disagreeing with the general line or drawing attention to a wrongdoing or demanding that state officials, including police and judges, actually do their jobs in keeping with the Russian Constitution, the Russian law codes, and the international and European conventions on human rights to which Russia is still a signatory, you have to have a lot of chutzpah. In fact, you have to have decided, whether consciously or not, that ordinary taxpaying Russians who don’t toe the Putinist line are your enemies, and you don’t mind at all if they’re crushed in the dirt by absolute fucking scumbags as long as self-righteous snake oil salesmen like Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges have yet another “outlet” for their tiresome message, which we all memorized years ago and which, in fact, they’ve had no trouble at all disseminating at will to whoever will listen for years on end. Pretending that they’re “forced” to go on RT, because they can’t get a hearing anywhere else, is the last refuge of an “anti-imperialist” scoundrel. TRR _ 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: Marxism, the Arab Spring, and Islamic fundamentalism | International Socialist Review
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[Marxism] [UCE] Fwd: Free speech and fighting the right on campus | International Socialist Review
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://isreview.org/issue/106/free-speech-and-fighting-right-campus _ 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] Fwd: April 1917: How Lenin Rearmed | International Socialist Review
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. * An answer to Lars Lih and Eric Blanc even though they are only mentioned in the endnotes. http://isreview.org/issue/106/april-1917-how-lenin-rearmed _ 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] [UCE] Re: Rhode Island Socialists split from Socialist Alternative
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. * "Capitalism creates structured capital and labor markets, and differential standards of living, by ethnicity and nation - and by gender." (sic) sounds good, thanks. However, wouldn't pointing out that "mean White people" will still "fuck things up. Because of their ideas [read their primarily male history of privilege]" will not be ended simply because the material basis behind gender and race oppression had been "exposed"? Indeed, wouldn't it take even more revolutionary struggle that would only begin with the elimination of the capitalist mode of production because "mean White . . . ideas" would still prevail over generations? Isn't this observation at least partially apparent in the struggles with race and gender oppression in revoutionary Cuba? I think the observation of the materialist basis of gender and racial oppression is insufficient a basis to engage in solidarity and struggle with oppressed peoples. We are not "sections" that simply require to be "intersectioned". The whole basis of "intersectionality" itself seems a rather a "mean White" construct to align White progressive sensibilities with "solidarity" with oppressed peoples. If we are in fact one (working) class, why should "we" be conceptualized into sections and reconciled into a framework of "intersectionality"? Such a concept wreaks of that liberal "otherism" idea. I almost (only "almost") prefer somebody to argue we are only one "class" than such a liberal "Marxist" framework delimiting women and other oppressed peoples as "sections" of th working class. _ 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] The Trump-Putin coalition for Assad lays waste to Syria: Imperial agreement and carve-up behind the noisy rhetoric
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. * Response to Chris Slee (first part - re Turkey etc, will post later). Chris: “The reference to "the complete absence of any military clash between the US and Assad in the Obama years" could be taken as implying that the US has always supported Assad, ever since the start of the uprising in 2011. “But in considering the lack of direct military clashes between the US and Assad during the Obama period, we should not forget that allies of the US did intervene militarily. Israel bombed Syria on a number of occasions. Turkey and the Gulf states supplied weapons to rebels (albeit limited in quantity and quality).” “Allies of the US” are not the US. For example, Iraq is a close ally of the US, in fact essentially a creature of the US invasion and occupation, the crowning act of US aggression this century, and Iraq actively supports Assad, in fact, as my article documents (see links), this involves nothing less than an invasion of Syria by 20,000 troops of the US/Iran-backed Iraqi regime. Al-Sisi’s bloody Egyptian tyranny is a US ally, and has sent arms and even military personnel to Syria to aid the Assad regime. Jordan is a US ally and has used its leverage over the southern FSA (given geography) to wind down the southern front against Assad, and when tasked jointly by the US and Russia to draw up a list of “terrorist” organisations to be excluded from talks, came up with a list of some 160 rebel groups, about half the insurgency! A list partly based on an earlier list drawn up by the UAE, another US ally. Lebanon is a US ally (5th largest recipient of US arms in the world), and it is quite remarkable how US arms manage to turn up with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The silly trope about “reactionary” or” US-backed” regimes supporting the Syrian opposition (albeit “for their own reasons”) relies on the idea that such regimes are limited to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey (and even that needs to take into account how hostile the first is to the second two, and hence their “support” was based precisely on their own rivalries). The majority of “reactionary” and “US-backed” states in the region either vigorously back the reactionary Assad regime, are neutral, or are effectively pro-Assad and anti-revolutionary. All that aside, these states are not puppets of the US, on either side, they act on their own interests. If Chris thinks Turkey, for example, backed the Syrian rebels because it is a “US ally,” then he presumably thinks the US told Turkey to send the Mavi Mamara to try to break the siege of Gaza too. Chris should also consider that, to the extent that the US had any relation to the arming of the Syrian rebels by these three states, its main role was always to try to limit the quantity and quality of the arms sent, restrict who they could be sent to, act to coopt those who got a few arms to divert them away from the struggle against Assad, and above all to ensure that no anti-aircraft weaponry got to the rebels ever, in an overwhelmingly air war launched by the regime. In the first few years, Israel (US ally, but once again, not puppet) was strongly pro-Assad, but with the greater Iranian involvement on Assad’s side by late 2013, together with the 2013 overthrow of the anti-Assad MB regime in Egypt (which had threatened an Egypt-Hamas-Syrian rebel alliance with heavy MB influence, but this danger was now reduced with Sisi's coup), Israel developed a new policy aimed largely at keeping Hezbollah away from the Golan and hitting warehouses or convoys where it suspected advanced weapons were being delivered to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Yet it has still never armed any rebel faction, the rebels remain relentlessly in support of regaining the Golan, and no Israeli hits on Hezbollah have ever directly aided rebels while clashing with Hezbollah. However, Chris continues: “I think that initially the US probably wanted Assad to be replaced. While he had collaborated with the US in some ways, he was not totally reliable. Thus I think the US had a perspective of removing Assad, and bringing a section of the opposition into the government, while keeping the regime largely intact.” We are all entitled to think what we want. Evidence is better. Initially the US - Hilary Clinton no less - strongly supported Assad the “reformer”, while telling “US ally” Mubarak to “step down” within a week or so of the beginning of the Egyptian uprising. The equivalent Obama statement asking Assad to “step aside”, by contrast, came some 6 months, and thousands of killings, later. But as Chris says, the aim was only ever replacing the Assad figure, not the regime - the US aimed to keep the regime intact, strengthened by removing
Re: [Marxism] [UCE] Re: Rhode Island Socialists split from Socialist Alternative
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. * Capitalism creates structured capital and labor markets, and differential standards of living, by ethnicity and nation - and by gender. Once formed, they have material consequences, and they evolve through oppression and struggle - over ideas, but even more so against the structures nourishing such crimes. As I've said in my Facebook notes on intersectionality, national and gender-based oppression on and off the job won't be eliminated without destruction of the laws of motion of capitalism, and the fragmented and discriminatory family and neighborhood structures which buttress those laws - a destruction which must involve conscious assaults against national and gender oppression. _ 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: Rhode Island Socialists split from Socialist Alternative
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. * "and explicitly state that when all is said and done, when class is exposed or eliminated, mean white people will still fuck things up - because of their ideas." Yes, Andrew. And, your problem with that point is? _ 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: Why in god’s name did the Socialist Project decide to recommend Alastair Crooke’s article hailing Assad’s victory? | 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. * https://louisproyect.org/2017/09/12/why-in-gods-name-did-the-socialist-project-decide-to-recommend-alastair-crookes-article-hailing-assads-victory/ _ 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] Rhode Island Socialists split from Socialist Alternative
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. * Lot of good stuff in this document. Note however the section "Race and Racism." Many forces on the Left have always criticized CWI and sections for their economism. The RI comrades however do so by reference to liberal/Maoist theories of privilege, whiteness, etc., and explicitly state that when all is said and done, when class is exposed or eliminated, mean white people will still fuck things up - because of their ideas. _ 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 'The Irish 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. * I've stuck up a fascinating article by Aindrias O Cathasaigh about James Connolly's writings and the inadequacy of a lot of the collections. The article comes a 2015 issue of the now defunct independent Irish left journal *Red Banner*: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/where-oh-where-is-our-james-connolly/ There's a short note on CLR James' 1935 visit to Dublin and a link to a fascinating article on the visit, written by Dublin historian and blogger Donal Fallon, whose work is always worth reading: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/c-l-r-james-visit-to-dublin-in-1935/ A 1932 letter by the leadership of the IRA to the men and women of the Orange Order: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/1932-open-letter-from-leadership-of-irish-republican-army-to-men-and-women-of-the-orange-order/ Back in 1995/96 I wrote a 120,000-word MA thesis on revolutionary Ireland in the early 1900s; the thesis chapters are here: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/category/thesis-chapters/ Phil _ 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] "Why George Bernard Shaw Had a Crush on Stalin"
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://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/why-george-bernard-shaw-had-a-crush-on-stalin.html The analysis doesn't go very deep, but IMO we should use this op-ed to lobby the publisher of Paul's book on the subject to put it back in print. Paul Flewers, The New Civilisation?: Understanding Stalin's Soviet Union 1929-1941 _ 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. * In New Zealand, every political party says it is against "child poverty" and wants to reduce the level of "child poverty". Veteran working class activist Don Franks suggests "child poverty" is bullshit; the problem is adult poverty and none of the parties will be reversing that: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/09/09/child-poverty-the-bullshit-factor/ Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has retweeted an intersting tweet noting that immigration does not affect wages and jobs in Britain: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/immigration-wages-employment-a-note-from-britain/ Continuing the critique of David Harvey's playing down of the importance of imperialism, Walter Daum makes some comments on Harvey, Baran-Sweezy and imperialism: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/09/06/david-harvey-and-imperialism-some-further-comments/ See also Walter's piece on Luxemburg's *Accumulation of Capital* a hundred years on: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/rosa-remixed-up-100-years-after-the-accumulation-of-capital/ Veteran left activist Phil Duncan looks at why the NZ working class today is so passive and politically under developed: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/08/27/whats-up-with-the-working-class-in-new-zealand/ PFLP in solidarity with US antio-racist campaigners: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/08/21/pflp-in-solidarity-with-us-anti-racist-campaigners/ _ 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
