date:20180808


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Really excellent overview on how life developed on this continent.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/making-north-america.html
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[Marxism] Speech on 5th anniversary of murder of Irish revolutionary Seamus Costello

2018-08-08 Thread Philip Ferguson via Marxism

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I've just put up on the Irish Revolution blog the speech delivered in 1982
by Jim Lane, a veteran socialist-republican and at the time a member of the
central leadership of the IRSP.  It was delivered at Seamus' grave in a
commemoration marking the 5th anniversary of his murder in Dublin.

The speech ranges over important issues in terms of the relationship of the
class and national struggle in Ireland, as well as talking about Seamus
himself.

https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/jim-lane-speech-at-1982-seamus-costello-commemoration/
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Re: [Marxism] Zimbabwe elections


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On 8/8/18 9:27 PM, DW via Marxism wrote:

Leaving that aside is if it's applied to Nicaragua, this means...what
exactly? Not seizing power? Limiting, even against the wishes of the rural
masses and urban workers further nationalizations? What would be the point
then of the FSLN coming to power if only to topple the hated dictatorship?
In fact, the self-limitations imposed by the FSLN worked out well, huh?
Plus, Louis, you make it out to seem as if nothing else was going on the
region...like El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. I am not arguing had, as A.
Sandino suggested..."only the workers and peasants can go all the way"
...that the results wouldn't of been any different. Though we never would
know had they, the FSLN, lead the masses to just that, that an even deeper
radicalization would not have shifted the entirety of Central America
working masses to consider socialist solutions. Revolutions happen when
it's least expected, afterall.


David's revolutionary bombast is not worth responding to except as a cue 
to post another excerpt from my 15 year old article:


In a very real sense, the gains of the Nicaraguan revolution were 
partially responsible for their undoing. The Agrarian Reform, in 
particular, caused traditional class relations in the countryside to 
fracture. Agricultural workers and poor campesinos no longer had to sell 
their labor at the cheapest price to the wealthy landowner. This, in 
turn, led to lower production of agricultural commodities.


George Vickers pointed these contradictions out in an article in the 
June 1990 "NACLA Report on the Americas" entitled "A Spider's Web." He 
noted that the Agrarian Reform provided a reduction in rents, greater 
access to credit and improved prices for basic grains. This meant that 
small peasants had no economic pressure on them to do the backbreaking 
work of harvesting export crops on large farms. Even when wages 
increased on these large farms, the campesino avoided picking cotton on 
the large farms. Who could blame them?


This meant that the 1980-1981 cotton harvest, which usually lasts from 
December through March, remained uncompleted until May. Each of the 
three subsequent coffee and cotton harvests suffered as well. The labor 
shortage became even more acute as the Contra war stepped up and rural 
workers were drafted into the Sandinista army.


In addition, Nicaragua faced the same type of contradictions between 
town and countryside that existed in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It 
was difficult to keep both urban proletariat and peasant satisfied due 
to conflicting class interests of each sector. While both classes fought 
to overthrow Czarism or Somoza, their interests tended to diverge after 
the revolution stabilized.


In 1985, the Agrarian Reform distributed 235,000 acres of land to the 
peasantry. This represented about 75% of all the land distributed to 
peasants since 1980. The purpose of this land distribution was twofold. 
It served to undercut the appeal of the Contras to some campesinos, 
since land hunger would no longer act as an irritant against the 
government in Managua. Daniel Ortega would simultaneously give a peasant 
title to the land and a rifle to defend it in ceremonies in the 
countryside all through 1985.


The second purpose of this land grant was to guarantee ample food 
delivery into the cities. This would allow the government to end food 
subsidies. The urban population had enjoyed a minimum of basic 
foodstuffs at highly subsidized prices. These price subsidies fueled 
budget deficits and, consequently, caused inflation.


The hope of the Sandinistas was that increases from new farm production 
from the countryside would compensate for the ending of food subsidies. 
However, what did occur was a sharp convergence between the price of 
subsidized food and food for sale in the retail markets. A pound of 
beans at the subsidized price was 300 cordobas, while retail market 
prices reached 8,000 cordobas. The subsidized breadbasket became a 
fiction while marketplace food became the harsh reality. Managua 
housewives became outraged as hunger and malnutrition among the poorest 
city-dwellers grew rapidly. The underlying cause of the high price of 
food was the shortage of supply. Contra attacks on food- producers, 
large and small exacerbated the shortage.


What was the solution to Nicaraguan hunger? Was the solution to shift to 
the left and attack the rural bourgeoisie? Should the Sandinistas have 
expropriated the cattle ranchers, cotton farmers and coffee plantations 
and turned the land into small farms for bean and corn production? This 
would have meant that foreign exchange would

Re: [Marxism] Zimbabwe elections

2018-08-08 Thread DW via Marxism

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Well...Louis suggested "Well-meaning Trotskyist comrades who castigate the
Sandinistas for not carrying out permanent revolution should remind
themselves of the full dimensions of Trotsky's theory." Indeed...but it the
theory didn't stop in 1907, now did it? Reading what Louis wrote it's as if
Trotsky only designated his theory for Tsarist Russia. Indeed...when he
wrote it. But after the debacle in China, and along with this Draft
Criticism of the Communist International he and his movement applied
universally. That is the "full dimensions of Trotsky's theory".

Leaving that aside is if it's applied to Nicaragua, this means...what
exactly? Not seizing power? Limiting, even against the wishes of the rural
masses and urban workers further nationalizations? What would be the point
then of the FSLN coming to power if only to topple the hated dictatorship?
In fact, the self-limitations imposed by the FSLN worked out well, huh?
Plus, Louis, you make it out to seem as if nothing else was going on the
region...like El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. I am not arguing had, as A.
Sandino suggested..."only the workers and peasants can go all the way"
...that the results wouldn't of been any different. Though we never would
know had they, the FSLN, lead the masses to just that, that an even deeper
radicalization would not have shifted the entirety of Central America
working masses to consider socialist solutions. Revolutions happen when
it's least expected, afterall.

David Walters
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[Marxism] Exile in Buyukada on Vimeo


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This is great. A mixture of narrative and documentary about Trotsky's 
years in Turkey narrated by Vanessa Redgrave. I saw it about 15 years 
ago and am so happy to see that it is now online for free.


https://vimeo.com/28754408
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Re: [Marxism] How Engels viewed the two-party system in the USA

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Yes, very good. I'd just note it doesn't address the question of "chucking
away one's ballot paper" when an electoral contest could lead to a
reactionary party being seated or some other tactical or strategic outcome
one should consider--and there wouldn't have been much reason to write
about that in 1886 in the US context given the bipartisan compromise to end
Reconstruction.
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[Marxism] New Details About Wilbur Ross’ Business Point To Pattern Of Grifting


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A multimillion-dollar lawsuit has been quietly making its way through 
the New York State court system over the last three years, pitting a 
private equity manager named David Storper against his former boss: 
Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. The pair worked side by side for more 
than a decade, eventually at the firm, WL Ross & Co.—where, Storper 
later alleged, Ross stole his interests in a private equity fund, 
transferred them to himself, then tried to cover it up with bogus 
paperwork. Two weeks ago, just before the start of a trial with $4 
million on the line, Ross and Storper agreed to a confidential 
settlement, whose existence has never been reported and whose terms 
remain secret.


It is difficult to imagine the possibility that a man like Ross, who 
Forbes estimates is worth some $700 million, might steal a few million 
from one of his business partners. Unless you have heard enough stories 
about Ross. Two former WL Ross colleagues remember the commerce 
secretary taking handfuls of Sweet’N Low packets from a nearby 
restaurant, so he didn’t have to go out and buy some for himself. One 
says workers at his house in the Hamptons used to call the office, 
claiming Ross had not paid them for their work. Another two people said 
Ross once pledged $1 million to a charity, then never paid. A commerce 
official called the tales “petty nonsense,” and added that Ross does not 
put sweetener in his coffee.



full: 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2018/08/06/new-details-about-wilbur-rosss-businesses-point-to-pattern-of-grifting/

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[Marxism] What can we do about fascism? | Richard Seymour on Patreon


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https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-can-we-do-20638399
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Re: [Marxism] Zimbabwe elections


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On 8/8/18 5:32 PM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:

"From Nicaragua to Zimababwe, the road of capitalist development has been
tried and tried again. It is not working."


First off, it is Zimbabwe, not Zimababwe.

Also, the possibility of either of these countries achieving "socialism" 
was zero. We need to get back to the earlier conception of socialism as 
a world system in order to understand the economic contradictions of a 
place like Nicaragua. This is from an article I wrote about 15 years ago 
answering the ISO:


A decisive factor in the transition to socialism in Russia would be the 
outcome of socialist revolutions in Europe. The survival of a revolution 
in Russia was impossible without help from victories in the West. In a 
"Speech on the International Situation" delivered to the 1918 Congress 
of Soviets, Lenin said, "The complete victory of the socialist 
revolution in one country alone is inconceivable and demands the most 
active cooperation of at least several advanced countries, which do not 
include Russia." Lenin is clearly consistent with the analysis put 
forward by Marx and Engels regarding the German revolution in 1850. 
Revolutions can not survive on their own. They have to link up with an 
overall assault on bourgeois power by a working-class unified under a 
socialist banner across nations, if not continents.


Trotsky's theory is a product of his study of the Russian 
class-struggle. He did not develop it as a general methodology for 
accomplishing bourgeois-democratic tasks in a semi-colonial or dependent 
country. He was instead seeking to address the needs of the 
class-struggle in Russia. In this respect, he was identical to Lenin. 
They were both revolutionaries who sought to establish socialism in 
Russia as rapidly as possible. Their difference centered on how closely 
connected socialist and bourgeois-democratic tasks would be at the 
outset. Lenin tended to approach things more from Plekhanov's "stagist" 
perspective, while Trotsky had a concept more similar to the one 
outlined by Marx and Engels in their comments on the German revolution.


Trotsky sharpened his insights as a participant and leader of the 
uprising of 1905, which in many ways was a dress-rehearsal for the 1917 
revolution. He wrote "Results and Prospects" to draw the lessons of 
1905. Virtually alone among leading Russian socialists, he rejected the 
idea that workers holding state power would protect private property:


"The political domination of the proletariat is incompatible with its 
economic enslavement. No matter under what political flag the 
proletariat has come to power, it is obliged to take the path of 
socialist policy. It would be the greatest utopianism to think that the 
proletariat, having been raised to political domination by the internal 
mechanism of a bourgeois revolution, can, even if it so desires, limit 
its mission to the creation of republican-democratic conditions for the 
social domination of the bourgeoisie."


Does not this accurately describe the events following the Bolshevik 
revolution in October, 1917? The workers took the socialist path almost 
immediately. If this alone defined the shape of revolutions to come, 
then Trotsky would appear as a prophet of the first magnitude.


Before leaping to this conclusion, we should consider Trotsky's entire 
argument. Not only would the workers adopt socialist policies once in 
power, their ability to maintain these policies depended on the 
class-struggle outside of Russia, not within it. He is emphatic:


"But how far can the socialist policy of the working class be applied in 
the economic conditions of Russia? We can say one thing with 
certainty--that it will come up against obstacles much sooner than it 
will stumble over the technical backwardness of the country. Without the 
direct State support of the European proletariat the working class of 
Russia cannot remain in power and convert its temporary domination into 
a lasting socialistic dictatorship."


While there is disagreement between Lenin and Trotsky on the exact 
character of the Russian revolution, there is none over the grim 
prospects for socialism in an isolated Russia. We must keep this 
uppermost in our mind when we consider the case of Nicaragua. 
Well-meaning Trotskyist comrades who castigate the Sandinistas for not 
carrying out permanent revolution should remind themselves of the full 
dimensions of Trotsky's theory. According to this theory, Russia was a 
beachhead for future socialist advances. If these advances did not 
occur, Russia would perish. Was Nicaragua a beachhead also? If socialism 
could not survive in a vast nation

[Marxism] Zimbabwe elections

2018-08-08 Thread John Reimann via Marxism

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"On July 30, Zimbabwe held its first election in decades in which Robert
Mugabe was not on the ballot. This event should cause socialists to look
back at what happened in that country and learn some lessons

"The main point, though, is that be it from China, the United States or any
other imperialist country, the idea that foreign investment can solve the
problems is a failure. That is exactly the road that the African National
Congress walked down and that led it to its present state.

"From Nicaragua to Zimababwe, the road of capitalist development has been
tried and tried again. It is not working."

read entire article here:
https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/08/08/zimbabwe-holds-elections/


-- 
*“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black
Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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[Marxism] HSBC warns that Earth is running out of resources to sustain life - Business Insider


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https://www.businessinsider.com/hsbc-warns-earth-is-running-out-of-resources-for-life-2018-8
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[Marxism] Russia Defends Saudi Arabia in Human Rights Dispute with Canada, Dividing Two Top U.S. Allies


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Can't wait for Grayzone to comment on this. Hope I live into the 22nd 
Century.


https://www.newsweek.com/russia-defends-saudi-arabia-human-rights-dispute-canada-splitting-us-allies-1064039
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[Marxism] Follow up on the NY Times Mag that "we are all guilty" for failling to take action to protect the planet

2018-08-08 Thread Michael Meeropol via Marxism

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http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/08/musing-about-losing-earth/
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[Marxism] Excessive U.S. sanctions could push Iran “over the brink”: UAE official to U.S. in 1995

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Allies warned Clinton escalating sanctions could “pose risks for the entire
region”

Declassified lessons on difficulties of implementing effective measures
toward Iran

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/iran/2018-08-08/excessive-us-sanctions-could-push-iran-over-brink-uae-official-us-1995
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[Marxism] Trump's political attacks threaten journalists - someone's going to get killed

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https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/51615-someone-is-going-to-get-killed-how-trumps-political-climate-threatens-journalists
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[Marxism] California's Fire Tornado Is What Climate Change Looks Like

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https://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/51613-californias-fire-tornado-is-what-climate-change-looks-like
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[Marxism] Reading and relaxing while Black - Call the cops!

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https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/51619-not-safe-to-be-black-at-smith-college
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Re: [Marxism] The Islamic State Threat to Syria’s Regime – LobeLog

2018-08-08 Thread mkaradjis via Marxism

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Lobelog often has rather incisive articles, yet this isn't one of
them. Of course its message that Assad's "victories" via "brute force"
are not a road to any kind of stable regime and that ISIS can maintain
a kind of low level insurgency in such a situation is entirely valid.

However, the claim that this massacre shows ISIS to be some kind of
threat to the regime is way off mark, and the claim that "by targeting
the Druze, who are concentrated in al-Suwayda governorate, IS might
succeed in creating a greater wedge between this religious minority
group and the regime, with the former losing confidence in the latter
to provide protection in territory that Assad’s forces took back from
rebel factions" - actually gets things back to front.

A better summary is in this article by Lina Khatib
https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/syrian-regime-using-isis-punish-civilians,
where she writes "the situation in Sweida says more about the Syrian
regime than about ISIS, and about how far the regime is willing to go
to pursue its goals at the expense of civilian lives."

An isolated ISIS-controlled pocket has been tucked into a corner in
southwest Daraa province for several years, wedged between rebel-held
Daraa on one side, and Israeli-occupied Daraa on the other. Both the
FSA/Southern Front rebels and Israel regularly attacked this ISIS
pocket, but the regime was content to leave it there as a wedge
against the Southern Front. Free Daraa stood between the ISIS pocket
and Druze-majority Suweida province. In all these years of
rebel-controlled Daraa, ISIS has never broken through towards Suweida.

And while the regime was attacking Daraa and seizing it from the FSA,
ISIS took the opportunity to also attack the FSA and seize territory,
under the regime's nose and with no reaction. It was only after the
full surrender of Free Daraa that the regime began attacking the ISIS
pocket.

A month or so earlier, the regime had evicted ISIS from the Yarmouk
Palestinian camp, south of Damascus. ISIS had invaded the camp in
2015, seizing it from the rebels (despite the camp being completely
sealed by a 3-year regime siege to date ...); following this the
regime left ISIS alone until it had subjugated the rebels in the rest
of Damascus region. During the regime attack on Yarmouk, it reached a
deal to transfer ISIS fighters out to the eastern desert border with
Jordan. *It was from this new eastern desert base* that ISIS was able
to launch this horrific attack against the Druze population in
Suweida.

But apart from this suspicious transfer, was it just incompetence that
prevented the victorious regime, which has reconquered the whole
southern region, from preventing an ISIS invasion of Suweida from
across the desert?

The local Suweida Druze would appear to be more suspicious than that,
or at least extremely angry. This anger "pushed residents to prevent
the governor of the province, Amer al Ashi, and representatives of the
government from attending the funeral"
(https://www.arabamericannews.com/2018/07/29/syrian-druze-bury-dead-as-anger-over-isis-attacks-grows/).

But why is the regime under suspicion of "using ISIS to punish
civilians" as Lina Khatib claims?

The Druze of Suweida have since the outset adopted a neutral position
in the war. They have refused to be conscripted into the regime army
to fight the rebels, and only agree to be part of the armed forced
defending their province. This has led to clashes with the regime over
the years. A powerful anti-regime movement, the Sheiks for Dignity,
arose and plays a prominent role. During the regime's attack on Daraa,
the Suweida Druze refused to take part, and when Assad troops who had
massively looted Daraa (and the Palestinian Yarmouk camp just
beforehand) tried to sell their loot in Suweida, they were forcefully
reject by the locals.

But with Assad's army hollowed out, there is a need to recruit more
troops. This became more acute due to the Russian-Israeli dealing over
the south; Israel gave the go-ahead for Assad's army to reconquer the
south up to the "border" of the Israeli-occupied Golan, while Russia
and Assad agreed that Iranian and Hezbollah troops would not be used
in the operation and would keep some 80 km away from the Golan fence.
As it was, many Iranian/Hezbollah troops still did take part, wearing
Assadist uniforms, but that was of little concern to Israel, as its
"conflict" with Iran is essentially of a symbolic nature in any case
(since they have never used their position in Syria to attack the
Israeli occupation in Golan, no-one is expecting them to begin); but
that absence of open Iranian symbolism also relied on their numbers
not being

[Marxism] Amy Meselson, Lawyer Who Defended Young Immigrants, Dies at 46


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NY Times, Aug. 8, 2018
Amy Meselson, Lawyer Who Defended Young Immigrants, Dies at 46
By Sam Roberts

In 2006, an East Harlem high school’s upset victory in a New York 
City-wide robot-building contest proved to be bittersweet for Amadou Ly, 
a member of the winning team.


Not only was Mr. Ly prevented from boarding a plane to Atlanta for the 
national finals with the rest of his team, because he lacked government 
identification; he was also facing deportation as an illegal immigrant.


Mr. Ly (pronounced Lee) had immigrated from Senegal, West Africa, with 
his mother in 2001. A year later, after his visitor’s visa had expired, 
she abandoned him.


In 2004, when a car he was riding in got into an accident, the police 
reported him to the immigration authorities. But that encounter, after a 
series of frustrating court appearances, ultimately delivered him, to 
his good fortune, to Amy Meselson, a Legal Aid Society lawyer in New York.


Ms. Meselson had dedicated her career to defending hundreds of 
vulnerable immigrants from deportation and helping them navigate the 
gaps between the child welfare and national security bureaucracies. She 
recruited volunteers from corporate law firms to represent foster 
children in immigration cases, and she successfully lobbied for a 
special juvenile section in immigration court.


Mr. Ly had been pinning his hopes on the Dream Act, the legislation that 
would have granted a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants 
brought to the United States illegally as children through no fault of 
their own.


When that legislation stalled in Congress, though, Ms. Meselson 
suggested that Mr. Ly’s impressive performance on the East Harlem 
Tutorial Program team at Central Park East High School might elicit 
public support for his case.


“I was very scared at that time,” he recalled, “but I knew I could trust 
her.”


Ms. Meselson helped bring Mr. Ly’s plight to public attention, namely 
providing information for a front-page profile in The New York Times. 
The article produced an outpouring of legal, public and political support.


Federal officials were persuaded to drop the deportation proceedings and 
grant Mr. Ly a foreign student visa. He graduated from Kingsborough 
Community College in Brooklyn, became a citizen, embarked on an acting 
career and moved to Hollywood.


Ms. Meselson, who had struggled with depression since she was a 
teenager, committed suicide on July 22 at her home in Manhattan, her 
mother, Sarah Meselson, said. She was 46.


Mr. Ly, now 30, said in a recorded tribute that he sent to Ms. 
Meselson’s family: “I was able to stay in this country, I was able to 
live my dream and grow up and feed my family and help out others because 
she helped me and she did it with open arms. She was my hero.”


Ms. Meselson worked in the immigration law unit of the Legal Aid Society 
in New York from 2002 until 2016, focusing on unaccompanied migrant 
children. She had recently become the managing attorney of the Immigrant 
Justice Corps, a volunteer program to provide free counsel.


Chief Judge Robert Katzmann, of the United States Court of Appeals for 
the Second Circuit, who was instrumental in founding the Immigrant 
Justice Corps, described Ms. Meselson in an email as “a life saver and 
life giver.”


“What Amy did was to give hope to immigrants and their families, to make 
it possible for dreams for a better life to be realized, for despair to 
be transformed into hope,” Judge Katzmann said.


Amy Valor Meselson was born on Dec. 4, 1971, in Boston to Matthew 
Meselson, a molecular biology professor at Harvard, and Sarah Page 
Meselson, who researched human rights conditions in Latin America and 
the Caribbean for the political asylum division of the United States 
immigration service.


Ms. Meselson earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a 
master’s from Harvard, both in philosophy. (Her senior thesis at Brown 
was about free will and determinism.) She earned her law degree at Yale.


In addition to her mother, she is survived by her father; her sister, 
Zoe Forbes; her stepmother, Jeanne Guillemin Meselson; her stepfather, 
Arthur Podaras; her stepsisters, Paola and Isabel Emerson; and her 
stepbrothers, Rob and John Guillemin and William Emerson IV.


Ms. Meselson earned her middle name by surviving a life-threatening 
respiratory disease. Besides dealing with depression, she had recently 
been given a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder and extreme anxiety 
— all aggravated when she traveled to Greece two years ago to volunteer 
at a camp for Syrian refugees, Sarah Meselson said at a memorial service.


At the service,

[Marxism] How Engels viewed the two-party system in the USA


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The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into 
the movement is always the organisation of the workers as an independent 
political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers' 
party. And this step has been taken, far more rapidly than we had a 
right to hope, and that is the main thing. That the first programme of 
this party is still confused and highly deficient, that it has set up 
the banner of Henry George, these are inevitable evils but also only 
transitory ones. The masses must have time and opportunity to develop 
and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own 
movement--no matter in what form so long as it is only their own 
movement--in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and 
learn wisdom by hurting themselves. The movement in America is in the 
same position as it was with us before 1848; the really intelligent 
people there will first of all have the same part to play as that played 
by the Communist League among the workers' associations before 1848. 
Except that in America now things will go infinitely more quickly; for 
the movement to have attained such election successes after scarcely 
eight months of existence is absolutely unheard of. And what is still 
lacking will be set going by the bourgeoisie; nowhere in the whole world 
do they come out so shamelessly and tyrannically as here, and your 
judges have got Bismarck's smart practitioners in the German Reich 
brilliantly driven off the field. Where the bourgeoisie conducts the 
struggle by methods of this kind, things come rapidly to a decision, and 
if we in Europe do not hurry up the Americans will soon be ahead of us. 
But it is just now that it is doubly necessary to have a few people 
there from our side with a firm seat in their saddles where theory and 
long-proved tactics are concerned, and who can also write and speak 
English; for, from good historical reasons, the Americans are worlds 
behind in all theoretical things, and while they did not bring over any 
medieval institutions from Europe they did bring over masses of medieval 
traditions, religion, English common (feudal) law, superstition, 
spiritualism, in short every kind of imbecility which was not directly 
harmful to business and which is now very serviceable for making the 
masses stupid. And if there are people at hand there whose minds are 
theoretically clear, who can tell them the consequences of their own 
mistakes beforehand and make it clear to them that every movement which 
does not keep the destruction of the wage system in view the whole time 
as its final aim is bound to go astray and fail--then many a piece of 
nonsense may be avoided and the process considerably shortened. But it 
must take place in the English way, the specific German character must 
be cut out and for that the gentlemen of the Sozialist have hardly the 
qualifications, while those of the Volkszeitung are only more 
intelligent where business is concerned.


full: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_11_29.htm

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Re: [Marxism] The excuses some Marxists make for voting Democratic (part two) | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist


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On 8/8/18 9:48 AM, Jason wrote:

Nimtz is not Engels.


You must have thought that if an expert on Marx and Engels's electoral 
strategy could be quoted out of context to endorse your 
class-collaborationist politics, it would earn you brownie points. Did 
you think that such an obvious misuse of Nimtz would fool anybody?


Here is how he views the Democratic Party:

https://platypus1917.org/2017/07/21/graveyard-progressive-social-movements-black-hole-democratic-party/
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Re: [Marxism] The excuses some Marxists make for voting Democratic (part two) | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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And again you are fine with using quotes to "prove" a point...but only when
they agree with you.
There are two problems here:
1) Nimtz is not Engels. So yes, I know that is Nimtz's point, but my
quoting him quoting Engels making a different point doesn't thereby
invalidate Engels's argument. It feels silly to have to say that but
2) The full quote from Marx and Engels goes on to say--as I pointed out
earlier on this list--"The advance...is infinitely more important than the
disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries
in the representative body". So it's not a timeless, context-free position
here, but an intervention into a particular situation in which for one,
Marx and Engels had underplayed running independent worker candidates and
so arguably are 'bending the stick' a bit. And for two, the threat of
reaction was mainly from bourgeois forces turning against the revolution
(the statement goes on to say: "If the forces of democracy take decisive,
terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the
reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed"),
not from some "few" spoiled races. That is not the situation we are in
today and with a presidential election that elevated Trump to the
presidency, it wasn't even a question of a "few" positions in a
representative body but of the most powerful elected position in the world.
3) I agree with "Even when there is no prospect whatever of their being
elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve
their independence, to count their forces and to lay before the public
their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint". I just think one has to
take particular election systems into account and they made this statement
in which most elections had a second round or something like it. So
basically what I'm advocating is treating the primary as the first round in
which a socialist political organization should "put up their own
candidates" and use the second round strategically.
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Re: [Marxism] The excuses some Marxists make for voting Democratic (part two) | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist


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On 8/8/18 9:19 AM, Jason wrote:


If you'd like the volume and page number, I can get it for you. 
Otherwise, this just seems to be yet another way to deflect from having 
to deal with information that doesn't fit your conclusion.


Actually, I have right in front of me August's article from the 
September 2010 New Political Science that he sent me with the comment 
that it was the seed of his book on Marx and Engels's electoral strategies.


It is a polemic against Adam Przeworski's defense of Social Democracy 
against critics such as Lenin and Trotsky. This excerpt from page 381 
should demonstrate where he stands:


Much of the Address [Address of the Central Authority to the Communist 
League, March 1850] is about the details for maintaining organizational 
independence during and after a successful anti-feudal democratic 
revolution including preparation for armed struggle. (To appreciate, by 
the way, the significance of the document, know that Lenin committed it 
to memory; with one important exception it comes close to being a 
blueprint for the Bolshevik revolution.43) Of importance here is the 
section on electoral strategy—Marx and Engels’s first detailed statement 
and what Engels had in mind when writing the Circular. To be clear, what 
they outlined was a strategy for the post-feudal period where a degree 
of political democracy exists for the working class to contest 
elections. Most relevant are the instructions for the working class:


	that everywhere worker’s candidates are put up alongside the 
bourgeois-democratic candidates, that they are as far as possible 
members of the League, and that their election is promoted by all means 
possible. Even when there is no prospect whatever of their being 
elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to 
preserve their independence, to count their forces and to lay before the 
public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint [my italics]. 
In this connection they must not allow themselves to be bribed by such 
arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are 
splitting the democratic party and giving the reactionaries the 
possibility of victory . . . The advance which the proletariat party is 
bound to make by such independent action is infinitely more important 
than the disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few 
reactionaries in the representative body.44



Get it? Let me repeat what August put in italics:

Even when there is no prospect whatever of their being elected, the 
workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their 
independence, to count their forces and to lay before the public their 
revolutionary attitude and party standpoint [my italics].

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Re: [Marxism] The excuses some Marxists make for voting Democratic (part two) | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 9:03 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

>
> What a joke. Citing August Nimtz as if he were on the Jacobin editorial
> board.
>

If you'd like the volume and page number, I can get it for you. Otherwise,
this just seems to be yet another way to deflect from having to deal with
information that doesn't fit your conclusion.
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Re: [Marxism] The excuses some Marxists make for voting Democratic (part two) | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist


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On 8/8/18 8:55 AM, Jason wrote:


* Nimtz also summarizes and quotes Engels:



What a joke. Citing August Nimtz as if he were on the Jacobin editorial 
board.

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[Marxism] bellingcat - "A Naive Set of Assumptions" - An Expert's View on Ted Postol Hexamine Theories - bellingcat

In the wake of the August 2013 Ghouta chemical attack, Ted Postol
attacked Dan Kaszeta’s argument that hexamine, C6H12N4, was a marker for
Sarin made by the Syrian government. Postol is a professor emeritus of
Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; Kaszeta is a consultant with experience in
chemical warfare issues and worked for the United States Secret Service,
the folks who guard the President.

Amines are a part of Sarin production. When Sarin is manufactured, HF is
produced. That HF will corrode equipment and destroy the Sarin, so
something is needed to neutralize it. HF is an acid and amines (hexamine
and others) are bases, which tie up (or scavenge) the HF and neutralize
its damaging properties.

We now know that hexamine is the Syrian government’s amine of choice for
Sarin manufacture. Postol got that wrong because of two
misunderstandings, one in elementary chemistry and the other in basic
chemical technology. They are accompanied by smaller errors. The sum of
the errors gives the impression of someone with no knowledge of
chemistry being aided by a person who has taken Chemistry 101. Postol
published his and Kaszeta’s emails on the subject, but has not compiled
his argument into an internet post or journal article.

full:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/08/06/naive-set-assumptions-experts-view-ted-postol-hexamine-theories/

(The author was a chemist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for 35
years. She regularly provides background information to reporters for
major publications and has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington
Post, and Vox. Her work at Los Alamos included projects in fossil fuels,
laser development, chemical weapons, open-source intelligence
techniques, and the nuclear fuel cycle. She has published in scientific
and political science journals and edited a book. She holds an A.B. from
Ripon College and an M.S. from the University of California at Berkeley.)

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Re: [Marxism] The excuses some Marxists make for voting Democratic (part two) | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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Here are several points on Marx and Engels on voting:
* Not only did the "Marx party" in the US support Lincoln's victory, in the
second election they convinced the more radical candidate (Fremont) to
withdraw so as not to split the vote (see Nimtz's work).

* Nimtz also summarizes and quotes Engels:

"Engels, three weeks earlier, applauded what he considered to be the
correct conduct for working- class parties in elections that required
runoffs: “[F]irst vote for our own man, and then, if it is clear that he
won’t get in on the second round, vote for the opponent of the government,
whoever he happens to be.”"

* Engels to Bebel, October 28, 1885, (MECW 47, p 342):

"In Germany it is easy to vote for a Social Democrat because we are the
only real opposition party and because the Reichstag has no say in
things...in France, things are altogether different. There, the Chamber is
the effective power in the land and there can be no question of chucking
away one's ballot paper. ... That is why the instinct of the Paris workers
in always supporting the most radical party *possible* is right from one
point of view."

* Engels to Bebel, January 24, 1893:

"He publicly declares that Parnell’s experiment, which compelled Gladstone
to give in, ought to be repeated at the next election and where it is
impossible to nominate a Labour candidate one should vote for the
Conservatives, in order to show the Liberals the power of the party. Now
this is a policy which under definite circumstances I myself recommended to
the English; however, if at the very outset one does not announce it as a
possible tactical move but proclaims it as tactics to be followed under any
circumstances, then it smells strongly of Champion."

The context was a vote in parliament by Irish MPs led to the failure of a
Liberal government, which led to the Liberal Party adopting a more
progressive position on Ireland to win back their votes.
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[Marxism] Can socialists use the Democrats? | SocialistWorker.org


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Great article by Alan Maass.

https://socialistworker.org/2018/08/08/can-socialists-use-the-democrats
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Re: [Marxism] On American Hegemony, Part I - Lawyers, Guns

2018-08-08 Thread Michael Meeropol via Marxism

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a lot of "inside baseball"  not sure reading parts II and III were
worth it 

(My $.02)

On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 7:41 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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> *
>
> Trump is not proposing an end to American hegemony. Rather, he seeks a
> change in how the US exercises leadership and a consequent shift in
> international and regional orders. If your primary beef with American
> hegemony has been its hypocrisy—its failure to live up to its rhetoric
> about liberal order—then Trump wants to solve your problem: by making the
> order less liberal.
>
> America’s strategic position—its hegemonic leadership—is not a story about
> a colossus striding the world on its own two feet. It’s a function of the
> strength of its strategic partnerships and core allies. The post-1992
> order—for good or for ill—was very much a collective achievement. On its
> own, the United States is much less impressive than discussions of
> “unipolarity,” or the fantasies of certain flavors of nationalists, would
> have you believe.
>
> The immediate consequence of the rise of China and of Russian
> assertiveness lies in the breaking of the ‘greater west’s’ dominance over
> international-order making. For good or for ill, countries now have more
> options about where to go for development aid, security assistance, and
> geopolitical support.
>
> Because the concentration of raw power among the ‘core allies’ remains
> very impressive, their major problem lies in maintaining cohesion. But here
> they are doing very poorly, and right-wing populism (with the encouragement
> of Russia) is the major immediate threat. The longer-term challenge is
> renegotiating the bargain to reflect contemporary challenges.
>
> http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/07/american-hegemony-part
>
> part 2: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/07/american-
> hegemony-part-ii-liberal-order-concept-good
>
> part 3: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/08/american-
> hegemony-part-iii-time-non-game-theory
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[Marxism] On American Hegemony, Part I - Lawyers, Guns

Trump is not proposing an end to American hegemony. Rather, he seeks a
change in how the US exercises leadership and a consequent shift in
international and regional orders. If your primary beef with American
hegemony has been its hypocrisy—its failure to live up to its rhetoric
about liberal order—then Trump wants to solve your problem: by making
the order less liberal.

America’s strategic position—its hegemonic leadership—is not a story
about a colossus striding the world on its own two feet. It’s a function
of the strength of its strategic partnerships and core allies. The
post-1992 order—for good or for ill—was very much a collective
achievement. On its own, the United States is much less impressive than
discussions of “unipolarity,” or the fantasies of certain flavors of
nationalists, would have you believe.

The immediate consequence of the rise of China and of Russian
assertiveness lies in the breaking of the ‘greater west’s’ dominance
over international-order making. For good or for ill, countries now have
more options about where to go for development aid, security assistance,
and geopolitical support.

Because the concentration of raw power among the ‘core allies’ remains
very impressive, their major problem lies in maintaining cohesion. But
here they are doing very poorly, and right-wing populism (with the
encouragement of Russia) is the major immediate threat. The longer-term
challenge is renegotiating the bargain to reflect contemporary challenges.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/07/american-hegemony-part

part 2:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/07/american-hegemony-part-ii-liberal-order-concept-good

part 3:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/08/american-hegemony-part-iii-time-non-game-theory

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[Marxism] Missouri Voters Overturn Right-To-Work Measure, Rejecting Republican Lawmakers | HuffPost