[Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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Richard Fidler said:

This is a recurring discussion on Marxmail and on any number of left web sites 
at least once every two years in line with the US elections calendar. How do we 
build a mass left party in the mighty USA? May I modestly suggest you look at 
some nearby examples in other countries for some ideas on how this might be 
done. As it is, I think the US left suffers as much as the Anglo-Canadian left 
from its insularity. 

I posted this month two articles to this list that just might have some 
relevance to your dilemma, and as usual when I post such items they met with no 
comment and to my knowledge no interest. But I think some of you might find it 
useful to look a little more closely at a phenomenon right on your doorstep, in 
Quebec. Here, once again, are those articles. A search of the Marxmail archives 
would reveal much more. Or, for my pieces alone, a search of my blog: 
http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/ . Just look 
for "Québec solidaire." Every 
national experience is unique, sui generis. But some generalizations are 
possible, if we probe deeply enough. And there is much to learn from each.


Ken Hiebert replies:
I read Richard’s reports on Quebec, and in particular Québec solitaire, with 
great interest.  And I expect others do as well, but I wouldn’t be surprised to 
learn that while they take heart from his reports they also feel that the 
situation is so different in their own country, that they can’t see how to 
apply the lessons of Quebec.
I will concede that there is insularity in English Canada. But even if in 
English Canada we are closer to the experience in Quebec, it also seems 
somewhat remote from what we confront in our own part of the country.

Speaking from a distance, I would still like to contribute to the discussion in 
the US.  If we are to make a break from the Democratic Party, it must start 
with the limited forces we now have.  The first initiatives will be small and 
have a modest impact.  Is there another way to break with the Democrats?  
Should we wait?  What would we be waiting for?  Inaction on our part only 
reinforces the hegemony of the Democratic Party.

Québec solidaire can be traced back to small, far left groups.  There were 
years of slogging before they got where they are today.  That, I think, is a 
lesson that can be taken from the Quebec experience.
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[Marxism] Brazilian social leader: 'We defeated the military dictatorship, we'll defeat Bolsonaro'

[Stuart Munckton via Marxism]

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Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), the continent’s largest social
movement, fights for land reform. Green Left Weekly’s Federico Fuentes
spoke with MST leader Alexandre Conceição the day after Bolsonaro’s win
about what it means — and how Brazilians plan to resist.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/brazilian-social-leader-we-defeated-military-dictatorship-well-defeat-bolsonaro


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[Marxism] From the Grampus to the Black Freighter: The Haunted Ship Romance Brought to Traditional Closure

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon is not the original macabre tale of the
 high seas. There are clear antecedents of Pym to be found in the oral
 legend of the Flying Dutchman and there were perhaps published
 predecessors to it that Edgar Allan Poe read. Likewise, it is difficult
 to argue that Alan Moore's “comic book-within-a-comic book” Tales of the
 Black Freighter, a subplot of his graphic novel Watchmen, is the  generic
climax of such tales. Yet it does seem that the following  argument can be
made: Pym is part of the original set of coordinates  that launches the
pirate romance laced with horror elements off the  dock. Freighter is one
of the last instances of such a project sailing  high upon the waves before
entering the post-modern self-parodying  shallows of Disney's PIRATES OF
THE CARIBBEAN film series. There is  nothing definitive in regards to
sequential order in this sub-genre in  these contexts. In a 2009 interview,
Harold Bloom said of another  Romantic sub-genre:
AVC: When you called [Blood Meridian] “the ultimate Western”, did you mean
merely the paramount example of the  genre, or its final expression?
HB: No, I meant the final one. It  culminates all the aesthetic potential
that Western fiction can have. I  don’t think that anyone can hope to
improve on it, that it essentially  closes out the tradition. (Pierce)
Such is my argument with Moore's  Tales of the Black Freighter. There will
be more pirate fictions in the  future, as with horror stories, and the
twain might intersect again  outside of a Disney film even. But such
fiction will not be able to  surpass what Moore and illustrator David
Gibbons did in their novel.



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Best regards,

Andrew Stewart
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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 11/1/18 9:50 PM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:

To me, it is not being "ideologically kosher" to believe that if you want
to build a socialist movement in Oakland, one with any real meaning, then
you have to orient to the kind of youth that attend Laney College. Or if it
is "ideologically kosher", then I plead guilty. Proudly.


My wife teaches at a place just like Laney. 80 percent of her students 
are Black or Latino and have day jobs working as bank tellers or in 
their parents' bodega. They have absolutely no time or energy to become 
activists even though they all hate Trump and can easily be convinced 
that capitalism is evil--this despite their ambitions to get an MBA and 
a better job. If you organized a meeting for DSA at Lehman College, 
nobody would show up. Trust me.


The reality is that students at Berkeley, NYU, Columbia are joining the 
DSA and doing things. There are reasons for this just as there were in 
the 60s. The antiwar movement didn't start at Community Colleges but 
were eventually swept along.


James P. Cannon once said that the art of politics is knowing what to do 
next. Cannon was fucked up in may ways but he also was a genius who 
absorbed the best of the IWW and the early Communist Party.

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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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Louis writes: "What does it mean to have an "outlook" toward the working
class? To
believe that it is potentially w revolutionary agent? I doubt that this
has any value except to show that you are ideologically kosher."

What it means is this: On Tuesday night I went to a meeting of the East Bay
DSA "socialist" night school. Like all the others, the meeting was totally
scripted. It started with a typically boring speaker and then with little
breakout groups where we had to discuss some questions that, typically,
simply nibbled around the edges of the issue. When I tried to raise the
issue of needing a working class party, it was cut off by the chair.

All of this is bad enough, but the part that's worse is that this approach
is warmly embraced by the members. Yes, I remember all the meetings of my
former union - Carpenters Union - where superficially something similar was
at work. But there at least there was something real at stake - in most
cases those who attended the meetings (a tiny, tiny percentage) were those
who were on the make - trying to get a job as a full time union official,
or already had such a job. On the job, things were totally different. Not
so with the great majority of DSA members I've come across.

Take the issue of the Oakland A's stadium: I wrote quite a bit about it
last year. How it was planned to be built right across the street from an
icon in the black community - Laney College; how it would have destroyed
Laney; how a movement at Laney was starting to develop in opposition. A
young comrade of mine and I went to a social meet-up of DSA right in this
neighborhood. We tried to get some interest in the issue. There was none.
Why? Because it didn't affect them and those in their social circle -
young, white college grads. They simply had no interest in the working
class youth who attend Laney.

To me, it is not being "ideologically kosher" to believe that if you want
to build a socialist movement in Oakland, one with any real meaning, then
you have to orient to the kind of youth that attend Laney College. Or if it
is "ideologically kosher", then I plead guilty. Proudly.

John Reimann
PS. As far as the local Green Party, they are no better. And as far as the
Peace and Freedom Party, they are completely overtaken by the sectarian
left, the type who all support Assad, while denying that they do.
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Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
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[Marxism] When fascist despair leads to fascist terror | Overland literary journal

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://overland.org.au/2018/11/when-fascist-despair-leads-to-fascist-terror/
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[Marxism] Bolsonaro's win brings big dangers, but left 'more united than ever'

[Stuart Munckton via Marxism]

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Brasil Wire editor Brian Mier speaks to Green Left Weekly’s Federico
Fuentes about the victory of fascist candidate Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s
presidential elections, and what it means for the coming period.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/bolsonaros-win-brings-big-dangers-left-more-united-ever


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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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Please, God.  Let's not go jousting windmills in search of a precise
definitions of class and classitudity (or classitudityness).  What matters
isn't our fine tuning these things among ourselves but addressing how
people who are not on this list address these things.

Finally, I'm astonished by the idea that I've never been a member of a
working class organization.  I have been in any number of unions over the
course of the last 50+ years, but none of them ever shared a class
perspective or outlook.

Cheers,
Mark L.
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Re: [Marxism] Subject: (no subject)

[Ralph Johansen via Marxism]

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What a fantastic piece observing the contours of a city and a region. 
Anyone who's lived for any time in the SF-Bay Area will recognize this. 
To get any adequate local perspective we need this kind of observation 
everyplace!




Anthony Boynton wrote

Impressions of elections in San Leandro

Two years and three months ago, for reasons totally unrelated to 
politics, we moved back to the United States from Colombia. After nearly 
twenty years of life in Bogotá, we landed in San Leandro, California.


During that time, I kept up on the USA through Marxmail, the New York 
Times, the Sacramento Bee and sundry other sources, but I paid close to 
zero attention to the nitty-gritty details of local politics in this 
country.


A few months after we arrived, Donald Trump was surprisingly elected. 
Ouch. That was a wake-up call. I had thought that the next big crisis of 
capitalism in the USA was going to be presided over by a Democrat and 
that one result would be radicalization to the left of the Democratic 
Party - something like what happened during the 1960’s when Kennedy and 
Johnson presided over US escalation of the war in Viet Nam.


Now, it seems that the new radicalization is occurring during the 
presidency of a racist, misogynist, authoritarian Republican. One 
consequence is that radicalization to the left is occurring mostly in, 
and through, the Democratic Party.


I guess you could say that the United States suffers from a form of 
bipolar disorder.


Leaving aside any deeper discussion of the present conjuncture, here are 
my impressions of the 2018 midterm elections from my current vantage 
point on the border of East Oakland and San Leandro.

...

Laura Wells https://laurawells.org/





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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 11/1/18 5:21 PM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:

However, their outlook is not towards the
working class as an independent force.


What does it mean to have an "outlook" toward the working class? To 
believe that it is potentially w revolutionary agent? I doubt that this 
has any value except to show that you are ideologically kosher.

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[Marxism] (no subject)

[Anthony Boynton via Marxism]

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*Impressions of elections in San Leandro*

Two years and three months ago, for reasons totally unrelated to politics,
we moved back to the United States from Colombia. After nearly twenty years
of life in Bogotá, we landed in San Leandro, California.

During that time, I kept up on the USA through Marxmail, the New York
Times, the Sacramento Bee and sundry other sources, but I paid close to
zero attention to the nitty-gritty details of local politics in this
country.

A few months after we arrived, Donald Trump was surprisingly elected. Ouch.
That was a wake-up call. I had thought that the next big crisis of
capitalism in the USA was going to be presided over by a Democrat and that
one result would be radicalization to the left of the Democratic Party -
something like what happened during the 1960’s when Kennedy and Johnson
presided over US escalation of the war in Viet Nam.

Now, it seems that the new radicalization is occurring during the
presidency of a racist, misogynist, authoritarian Republican. One
consequence is that radicalization to the left is occurring mostly in, and
through, the Democratic Party.

I guess you could say that the United States suffers from a form of bipolar
disorder.

Leaving aside any deeper discussion of the present conjuncture, here are my
impressions of the 2018 midterm elections from my current vantage point on
the border of East Oakland and San Leandro.

I live just inside of San Leandro at the north end of town, one block from
East Oakland (which is really in the southern part of Oakland). The
dividing line is Durant Avenue. When I was a kid, it was the dividing line
between all-white San Leandro, and all-black Oakland.

Segregation was a reality here even if it was not written into law. Here,
it was a strange kind of segregation because “white” in San Leandro meant
“not-black” most of the time, so English speaking Chicanos, various other
brown Latinos, Filipinos, and various Asians were able to live in San
Leandro and own property here.

Now both sides of the city line have integrated, but not in exactly the
same ways. Real estate prices are substantially higher here than they are
two blocks away in Oakland, so this part of San Leandro has gentrified with
leakage from Silicon Valley as well as gaining more Asian and Latino
residents, a substantial number of black residents, most of whom are
professional people, and a slew of multiracial and multicultural couples
with their kids. Now the neighborhood reminds me of the way south Berkeley
and north Oakland were back in the 60’s and 70’s.

Nearby East Oakland has mostly avoided gentrification, although real estate
prices there have risen apace with real estate prices throughout the Bay
Area. Integration there has taken the form of Latino and Asian renters
moving in. There are also a smaller number of white gentrifiers buying
moving in.

In 1960, this neighborhood was full of white trade unionists with a
smattering of small business owners and professionals. The Oakland General
motors plant was located just a few blocks away at Durant and East 14th St.
(now called International Blvd in Oakland). In 1963, GM opened its big new
assembly plant in Fremont, so the Oakland plant was turned into a parts
warehouse, but the adjacent neighborhoods remained UAW bastions: white GM
workers across East 14th street in an extension of San Leandro, and black
GM workers north of the plant and north of the white workers’ neighborhood.

In those days, there was also the giant Caterpillar tractor factory nearby
(the first Caterpillar factory anywhere, since Caterpillar was started here
in San Leandro.) My first wife worked there for a time. Not too far away,
there was a Mack Truck factory, a Peterbilt truck factory, a couple of GE
plants, many food processing plants, and dozens of machine shops and sheet
metal shops.

Black east Oakland was even more a bastion of trade unionism than was San
Leandro, especially the UAW, the ILWU and the UE.

East Oakland and San Leandro were right in the center of the World War II
industrial belt that snaked along the bay from Pittsburgh, California on
the Carquinez Straits, where US steel had a plant, through Martinez and
Richmond, where the oil refineries and chemical plants were located,
through the enormous Kaiser shipyards which stretched from Richmond almost
to Albany, through the foundries, glass factories, food processing plants,
and automobile, farm machinery and truck factories of Oakland, San Leandro
and Hayward.

In the center of it all was, and still is, the Port of Oakland. In the
1960’s it was transformed by the war in Viet Nam into one of the world’s
most important container ports.

[Marxism] American Socialist playing in Woodstock, NY and Austin, TX this weekend - tell others.

[yitztyco--- via Marxism]

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Nov. 4-5 tell folks American Socialist plays in Austin, TX - here is the link:


https://drafthouse.com/show/american-socialist-the-life-and-times-of-eugene-victor-debs




Nov. 5 tell folks American Socialist plays in Woodstock, NY - here is the link:


https://www.classiccinemas.com/page/10354/Woodstock-Celebrates-presents-American-Socialist

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[Marxism] Could Victorian Socialists be about to make history?

[Ratbag Media via Marxism]

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Australia has not had a socialist parliamentarian, at the state or federal
level, since the 1940s. But this may change at the November 24 Victorian
state election.

Victorian Socialists was formed earlier this year as a coalition of
socialist groups, including the Socialist Alliance, to bring a real
left-wing voice to parliament.

Many of those involved in Victorian Socialists have commented on how
historic this project is. None can remember a socialist election campaign
as big in recent decades.

The party has more than 1300 members and hundreds of volunteers who have
been campaigning on a weekly basis.
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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Ralph Johansen via Marxism]

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John Reimann

In reply to Richard Fidler:

All too many socialists define the issue as being the building of a 
"party of the left" or of a "mass socialist party". That is the 
completely wrong way of looking at the matter. The issue simply is that 
all political parties are based on one class or another. The Republicans 
and Democrats are capitalist parties. The working class has no party of 
its own. Again, to emphasize: What is needed is a *party based on the 
working class.* That is the way to look at the matter.


John Reimann wrote

In reply to Richard Fidler:

All too many socialists define the issue as being the building of a 
"party of the left" or of a "mass socialist party". That is the 
completely wrong way of looking at the matter. The issue simply is that 
all political parties are based on one class or another. The Republicans 
and Democrats are capitalist parties. The working class has no party of 
its own. Again, to emphasize: What is needed is a *party based on the 
working class.* That is the way to look at the matter.


John Reimann

Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook

I suggest that we continue to do basic homework on specifics, as 
contradictions mount. One thing we badly need is a further analysis of 
class, one that does not simply set up static Weberian categories or 
ideal types in the manner of what Erik Olin Wright has done in the past, 
but that examines in all their fluidity and tenuous nature the present 
and likely emerging dominant categories of work, and their relationship 
to the law of value and the extraction of surplus. Among other things, 
that might help to establish which broader fractions of the working 
class can be counted on as being in the forefront, and in it for the 
distance. and therefore which might be reliable allies on which to grow 
and spread. Also, the ways in which those categories of labor have 
changed, evolved and flowed with changes in the nature of the capitalist 
processes of production, and in what ways they are presently doing so. 
And above all probably, closer analysis of the global picture; better 
understanding of the stratagems, or unintended consequences, of the 
movement of profit-seeking-at-any-price transnational capital in 
relation to the working class, and how we counteract capital's immense 
power to keep the working class, regional, vertical and horizontal 
divisions of labor, invidious distinctions nationally and tribally, 
divided and off-balance.


Mentioned in the business literature I have seen as principal developing 
areas of new employment are health-care and health-related forms of 
work, including care of the aging and bio-tech. Another featured 
prominently is warehouse work, with burgeoning online commerce and 
aspects of industrial expansion. As to health-care related work, of 
course, much of it is spread widely and thinly, somewhat as is 
traditional housework and care in the home, but by no means all, and 
that deserves close attention. The other, warehouse work, may grow and 
become more significant as a powerful category of work. But I think of 
the analogous case of what has happened to dockworkers and the 
composition of labor in shipping, where the docks are so automated that 
now a few workers suffice to press buttons and read charts. Does the 
same not easily apply to warehouse work?


This is a neglected area, from my reading, and a much-needed one. Unless 
we better survey and understand the lay of the land in the working class 
on a deeper level, I don't see how anyone can very well construct 
reliable models for action and strategy.



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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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In the first place, none of the candidates I mentioned are from the tiny
and (hopefully) irrelevant left sects. All of them have an independent base
in the different protest movements in which they have participated.

Second, there is no reason whatsoever to assume that I define working class
as being blue collar factory workers. I use the term as it is meant to be
used - as wage workers. Yes, many in DSA are wage workers in that they work
for non profits for example. However, their outlook is not towards the
working class as an independent force. And they orient almost entirely
towards the liberal wing of the Democrats.

One reason I insist on describing the issue in class terms vs. ideological
is that the Democrats could make a turn towards the left. Then where are
we? Talking about a "left party" opens the door to supporting the "left"
wing of the Democrats. It also confuses the issue.

John Reimann

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Jacobins" by C. L. R. James
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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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"We would also raise the need for Ocasio-Cortez, or any socialist, to use their
position to help develop a clear program that goes beyond reforms and poses a
clear alternative to the dysfunctional capitalist system. This is an important
part of building the socialist movement because again and again she will be
pressured to moderate her positions by defenders of capitalism. If she does,
this can lower the confidence of working people to fight for even modest
reforms. By outlining a bold vision for socialist transformation she can help
politically prepare a new generation for what will be needed: taking the biggest
500 corporations into democratic public ownership and rebuilding society on the
basis of democratically planned economy that puts human need before corporate
greed.

"Ocasio-Cortez will undoubtedly play a positive and important role by providing
a contrast to spineless corporate Democrats, but it's highly unlikely that
Ocasio-Cortez would take the approach proposed above. We outline it here to
raise the sights of our readers and explain a Marxist vision for the kind of
movement needed along with what role an elected socialist could play."

<
https://www.socialistalternative.org/2018/10/04/ocasio-cortez-provide-bold-lead-
socialists-elected-office/>


-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Mark
Lause via Marxism
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2018 2:59 PM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Cc: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

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SAlt?  Say it ain't so . . . . :-)

I saw a video of them singing "the Internationale" at their convention.
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[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-1960s]: Bruno on Olsen, 'The Working-Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism'

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 

Begin forwarded message:

> From: H-Net Staff 
> Date: November 1, 2018 at 10:15:51 AM EDT
> To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-1960s]:  Bruno on Olsen, 'The Working-Class 
> Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism'
> Reply-To: H-Net Staff 
> 
> Henry Olsen.  The Working-Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the
> Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.  New York  Broadside Books, 2017.
> 368 pp.  $27.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-06-247526-8.
> 
> Reviewed by Adam Bruno (Miami University of Ohio)
> Published on H-1960s (November, 2018)
> Commissioned by Zachary J. Lechner
> 
> Reagan: New Dealer 'Til the End?
> 
> Nearly thirty years after departing the nation's highest office,
> Ronald Reagan remains an immensely popular and polarizing figure. In
> The Working-Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of
> Blue-Collar Conservatism, Henry Olsen engages long-held assumptions
> of Reagan's undying devotion to conservatism. Throughout his work,
> Olsen posits that it is Reagan's unique, New Deal-based philosophy
> that makes him iconic. This book, then, argues that it was Reagan's
> "distinct and original philosophy, not his charisma or pragmatism,
> that allowed him to change his party, his country, and his world," a
> philosophy that transcends "both left and right" (p. x). Written in a
> moment of intense partisan and national identity crises, the book
> makes the case that Republicans would be wise to emulate Reagan's
> blue-collar philosophies. Olsen postulates that Reagan was a man who
> cared deeply for the nation's people, remained an ardent New Dealer
> his entire life, and practiced a brand of conservatism that upheld
> the common man above all else.
> 
> In _The Working-Class Republican_, Olsen joins scores of other
> writers with his praise for the nation's fortieth president. Olsen's
> work is unique in its focus on Reagan's New Deal roots and emphasis
> on his distrust of bureaucracy, not government itself. Each of the
> work's eight chapters portrays Reagan's actions as more Franklin
> Delano Roosevelt-inspired than many on either side of the political
> aisle care to acknowledge. Many on the left can take heart that the
> most legendary of conservatives built his career on the foundation of
> a great American liberal, while Olsen encourages those on the right
> to love the ordinary man in the same way that FDR and Reagan did.
> Each successive chapter of this book builds on the previous one to
> support the broader argument of Reagan as a "working-class
> Republican."
> 
> In chapter 1, "Reagan Enters, Stage Left," Reagan comes of age in
> support of FDR's ideals of compassion for the common man and the
> dignity of the individual. This initial chapter describes not only
> Reagan's early life but also the New Deal environment of his early
> adult life. These formative years prove integral in the development
> of the future President Reagan. Indeed, America's great
> twentieth-century conservative icon seemingly drew much of his early
> policy from a giant of liberalism, FDR.
> 
> Chapter 2, "Ronald Reagan: All American," refutes the ideas that
> Reagan drastically changed in the 1950s. Conversely, Reagan stayed
> true to his New Deal roots, opposing ballooning government
> bureaucracy, not the government programs themselves. Throughout his
> drift toward the Republican Party in the 1950s and early 1960s,
> Reagan was a consistent proponent of a supportive government, not a
> planned one. Thus, Reagan remained committed to everyday people but
> resisted big government.
> 
> In chapter 3, "'A Time for Choosing': A Star Is Born," the
> distinction between Reagan's New Deal-based conservatism and Barry
> Goldwater's individualistic ideology is most evident. In the 1960s
> Reagan began vocally appealing to anti-big government former
> Democrats like himself, yet simultaneously--and quietly--distancing
> himself from ultras like Goldwater. Reagan's speeches from the
> sixties and beyond demonstrate his commitment to the dignity of
> ordinary people. These views shaped a set of plans based in New Deal
> ideology and Reagan's ever-present love for the common man.
> 
> Chapter 4, "The Creative Society, Starring Ronald Reagan," shows that
> Reagan clarified his ideas and principles as he ran for governor of
> California. In these years, Reagan pointed his criticisms not at the
> aims of the Great Society but at the excessive governmental overreach
> that accompanied it. These years demonstrated Reagan's commitment to
> a unique New Deal-based conservatism and policies that were
> "inherently grounded in an interpr

Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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SAlt?  Say it ain't so . . . . :-)

I saw a video of them singing "the Internationale" at their convention.
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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 11/1/18 2:41 PM, Mark Lause wrote:


There is no reason why the various socialist groups couldn't put 
together a common ticket.  None.  I had hoped that Sawant's victory 
would have moved things that direction, but it didn't.  But why wouldn't 
this happen?  Why didn't it happen years ago?  Or even decades ago?


Probably the result of Socialist Alternative's drift toward the DP that 
has gone full-tilt boogie with their ringing doorbells for A. O-C.

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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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I actually don't think that independent political action has to be--or
should be--restricted to sectified efforts.  The Greens in this state got
104,000 votes for governor in 2014 with a very minimal campaign.  Now, if
you actually put some will behind it--and the desire to actually organize a
real third party--we might be talking about something serious.  Socialists
hereabouts said that they didn't want to dirty their hands with the
Greens.  (Turns out that they were keeping them clean to support Bernie
Sanders.)  Democrats or aspiring power-brokers with the Democrats pop up to
derail and dead end these things all the time. (As they do with whatever
wiggles the direction of independent mass movements generally.)

There is no reason why the various socialist groups couldn't put together a
common ticket.  None.  I had hoped that Sawant's victory would have moved
things that direction, but it didn't.  But why wouldn't this happen?  Why
didn't it happen years ago?  Or even decades ago?

These are questions in my mind that ask themselves every election.

Cheers,
Mark L.
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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 11/1/18 11:59 AM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:


In reply to Richard Fidler:

All too many socialists define the issue as being the building of a "party
of the left" or of a "mass socialist party". That is the completely wrong
way of looking at the matter. The issue simply is that all political
parties are based on one class or another. The Republicans and Democrats
are capitalist parties. The working class has no party of its own. Again,
to emphasize: What is needed is a *party based on the working class.* That
is the way to look at the matter.

John Reimann



John, in class terms, what would be the difference between the Greens 
and the DSA if the DSA decided to run as socialists rather than back the 
DP? There is no difference. They are made up primarily of white-collar 
wage workers, professionals and petty proprietors.


If you define working class as the traditional blue-collar, 
assembly-line type positions that were at the forefront of the CIO 
organizing drives and who joined the CPUSA in the 1930s, there is no 
sign of any equivalence today. People who are ready to start a new party 
tend to be school teachers, web developers, nurses, social workers, etc. 
These are not only the people who join the DSA or the GPUSA today but 
who also joined the Trotskyist movement in the 1960s and 70s.


Nothing would make me happier than to discover that a bunch of 
rank-and-file steelworkers had decided to start a new party but it will 
take years and years of class confrontation to see anything like that 
happening. Essentially, you are supporting a good idea that has no basis 
in objective conditions.


Revolutionary organizations that have tried to build parties "based in 
the working class" have come up empty. There are many explanations for 
this that have mostly to do with the post-WWII economic situation but 
going into it in any kind of detail would take some time to do right. I 
don't have that time right now, maybe later.

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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[John Reimann via Marxism]

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In reply to Richard Fidler:

All too many socialists define the issue as being the building of a "party
of the left" or of a "mass socialist party". That is the completely wrong
way of looking at the matter. The issue simply is that all political
parties are based on one class or another. The Republicans and Democrats
are capitalist parties. The working class has no party of its own. Again,
to emphasize: What is needed is a *party based on the working class.* That
is the way to look at the matter.

John Reimann
-- 
*“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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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Oops, the references to 1972 and 1976 below should be, of course, to 2002 and 
2006. Guess I am still living in the 20th century.

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Richard 
Fidler via Marxism
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2018 9:58 AM
To: rfid...@ncf.ca
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

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Thanks, Mark. 

 

It strikes me that “independent political action” in the US at present comes 
down to a largely ideological action – small sects running candidates in their 
own name hoping to attract some individuals to their “party,” or simply 
commenting from the sidelines. Perhaps that is all that is possible at this 
time, as you may be suggesting. Obviously, in Quebec (not in Canada as a whole, 
unfortunately) we are in a much more favourable position. Québec solidaire is a 
party with a much more developed program than anything you have in the USA, and 
is certainly much more influential than the DSA or any of the sects. 

 

But this is the result of a long process that began about 20 years ago, when 
some survivors of the old Trotskyist and “Marxist-Leninist” (Maoist) groups of 
the 1970s began to get together and discuss how to build a new broad left 
party. Over the next few years they reached broad agreement to put aside old 
doctrinal differences of 20th century socialism and to focus on a few key 
programmatic themes: feminism, left pluralism, opposition to global 
imperialism, and, not least, in the Quebec context support for Quebec national 
independence from the Canadian state (an intellectually liberating concept as 
it freed their thinking from the restrictions imposed by the existing 
constitutional division of powers). This could not have occurred until the 
dominant pro-independence party, the Parti québécois (PQ), had become widely 
discredited as a result of its implementation of capitalist austerity while in 
government and its failure to win majority support for independence in the 1995 
referendum.

 

Crucially, the regroupment process sought ways to build alliances with the 
existing social movements, especially the women’s movement (still relatively 
strong at that time in Quebec, where the world march of women began) and the 
“altermondialiste” (global justice) movement. More recently the fight against 
climate change has become a dominant theme.

 

Then they began a few electoralist experiments – a candidacy against the PQ 
prime minister, in which their candidate (Michel Chartrand, an old 
social-democratic leader) got about 18% of the vote, and most successfully in 
2001 in a Montréal by-election where their candidate (a leader of a short-lived 
municipal workers party in the early 1970s) got 24% of the vote. This led to 
the formation of a “union of progressive forces” (UFP) in 1972, followed in 
1976 by a merger with a coalition of feminist and community-oriented social 
movements to form Québec solidaire. 

 [snip]


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[Marxism] Google Faces Internal Backlash Over Handling of Sexual Harassment

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Nov. 1, 2018
Google Faces Internal Backlash Over Handling of Sexual Harassment
By Kate Conger, Daisuke Wakabayashi and Katie Benner

SAN FRANCISCO — Google is struggling to contain a growing internal 
backlash over its handling of sexual harassment and its workplace culture.


Over the past week, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and Larry 
Page, a co-founder of Google and the chief executive of its parent 
company, Alphabet, have taken multiple steps to calm its agitated 
94,000-person work force. The anger arose after The New York Times 
revealed last week that Google had paid millions of dollars in exit 
packages to male executives accused of harassment and stayed silent 
about their transgressions.


Google later said it had fired 48 people for sexual harassment over the 
last two years; none received an exit package. Mr. Page and Mr. Pichai 
also issued apologies, with Mr. Pichai later saying his initial 
statement “wasn’t enough” and apologizing again. And one of the 
executives whom Alphabet continued employing after he was accused of 
harassment resigned on Tuesday and did not obtain an exit package.


But employees’ dissatisfaction has not subsided. On Thursday, more than 
1,500 — most of them women — plan to walk out of almost two dozen 
company offices around the world to protest the treatment, organizers said.


“We don’t want to feel that we’re unequal or we’re not respected 
anymore,” said Claire Stapleton, 33, a product marketing manager at 
Google’s YouTube who helped call for the walkout. “Google’s famous for 
its culture. But in reality we’re not even meeting the basics of 
respect, justice and fairness for every single person here.”


The walkout is a culmination of simmering tensions at a time when 
Silicon Valley workers have become more activist. Tech employees once 
moved in lock step with their leaders to make products that they said 
would change the world, but the industry has come under the spotlight 
for causing harm rather than good. That has led engineers, data 
scientists and others to increasingly question how their work is being used.


Employees at Microsoft and Amazon recently protested the companies’ work 
with federal immigration authorities when migrant children were being 
separated from their families at the Mexican border. And some employees 
at Facebook have complained that the social network is intolerant of 
different political perspectives.


Nowhere has the tech employee activism been more evident than at Google. 
Workers have pushed back this year against the company’s artificial 
intelligence work with the Pentagon, saying their work shouldn’t be used 
for warfare. Google eventually decided not to renew its contract with 
the Pentagon. Employees also rebuked Mr. Pichai and other executives for 
developing a search engine for China that would censor results. Since 
then, Google has not moved forward on a search product for China.


Google declined to comment.

The treatment of female employees has been an especially charged topic 
at Google. Just 31 percent of its global work force and about 26 percent 
of its executives are women. Google has also been sued by former 
employees and the Department of Labor, which claim that it underpaid 
women; the company has said it does not have a wage gap between male and 
female employees.


Google workers said other incidents had raised questions about the 
company’s attitude toward women. Last year, one engineer, James Damore, 
argued in an internal document that women were biologically less adept 
at engineering and that “personality differences” explained the shortage 
of female leaders at the company. After an outcry, Google executives 
rejected the memo and fired Mr. Damore.


At a staff meeting last year, Google’s founders, Mr. Page and Sergey 
Brin, also struggled to answer a question about who their female role 
models were, said two employees who saw a video of the meeting.


Mr. Brin tried to recall the name of a woman he had recently met at a 
company event who had impressed him, the people said. Mr. Page 
eventually reminded Mr. Brin that the woman’s name was Gloria Steinem, 
the feminist writer. Mr. Page said his hero was Ruth Porat, the chief 
financial officer of Google and Alphabet, said the people, who were not 
authorized to speak publicly.


Last week, The Times reported that Google had paid Andy Rubin, the 
creator of the Android mobile software, a $90 million exit package even 
after the company concluded that a harassment claim against him was 
credible. (Mr. Rubin has denied any misconduct and has said the report 
of his compensation is a “wild exaggeration.”) Google

[Marxism] Donald Trump’s Unconstitutional Dreams

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times Op-Ed, Oct. 31, 2018
Donald Trump’s Unconstitutional Dreams
The president has birthright citizenship all wrong.
By Eric Foner

(Mr. Foner is a historian who specializes in the Reconstruction period.)

In an interview with the news program “Axios on HBO,” President Trump 
announced that he plans to issue an executive order ending birthright 
citizenship, the principle that everyone born in the United States, with 
a handful of exceptions, is automatically a citizen of the United States.


“It was always told to me,” the president declared, “that you needed a 
constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t.”


In fact, such an order would undoubtedly be unconstitutional. It would 
also violate a deeply rooted American idea — that anybody, regardless of 
race, religion, national origin, or the legal status of one’s parents, 
can be a loyal citizen of this country.


Birthright citizenship is established by the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 
still on the books today, and by the Fourteenth Amendment to the 
Constitution, ratified two years later. The only exceptions, in the 
words of the amendment, are persons not “subject to the jurisdiction” of 
the United States. Members of Congress at the time made clear that this 
wording applied only to Native Americans living on reservations — then 
considered members of their own tribal sovereignties, not the nation — 
and American-born children of foreign diplomats. (Congress made all 
Native Americans citizens in 1924.)


Embedding birthright citizenship in the Constitution was one of the 
transformative results of the Civil War and the destruction of slavery. 
Before the war, no uniform definition of citizenship existed. Soon after 
the conflict ended, members of Congress asked Horace Binney, a prominent 
lawyer and a former congressman, to explore the meaning of citizenship.


“The word citizen,” he responded, “is found ten times at least in the 
Constitution of the United States, and no definition of it is given 
anywhere.” States determined who was a citizen and the rules varied 
considerably. Massachusetts recognized free African-Americans as 
citizens; many other states did not. For persons immigrating from 
abroad, moreover, racial distinctions were built into federal law.


The first Naturalization Act, in 1790, limited the process of 
naturalization to “white persons.” In 1857, on the eve of the Civil War, 
the Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott decision, declared that no black 
person, slave or free, could be a citizen of the United States or part 
of the national “political community.” Echoes of this outlook persist to 
this day, including in Mr. Trump’s long campaign to deny the birthright 
citizenship status of President Barack Obama.


Long before the Civil War, abolitionists black and white had proposed an 
alternative understanding of national citizenship severed from the 
concept of race, with citizens’ rights enforced by the federal 
government. Gatherings where northern free blacks agitated for equal 
rights called themselves conventions of “colored citizens” to drive home 
this idea. And by the conclusion of the war, the end of slavery and the 
service of nearly 200,000 African-Americans in the Union army and navy 
propelled the question of black citizenship to center stage of American 
politics.


The Fourteenth Amendment was meant to provide, for the first time, a 
uniform national definition of citizenship, so that states would no 
longer be able to deny that status to blacks. It went on to require the 
states to accord all “persons,” including aliens, the equal protection 
of the laws, as part of an effort to create a new egalitarian republic 
on the ashes of slavery.


The birthright citizenship provision, explained Senator Jacob Howard of 
Michigan, one of the founders of the Republican Party and the floor 
manager of the amendment’s passage in the Senate, was intended to 
“settle the great question of citizenship once and for all.” The 
amendment formed part of a constitutional revolution that, in the words 
of George William Curtis, the editor of the Republican magazine Harper’s 
Weekly, transformed a document “for white men” into one “for mankind.” 
In 1870, Congress amended the naturalization laws to allow black 
immigrants to become citizens. The bar to Asians, however, persisted; 
they could not be naturalized until well into the 20th century.


Mr. Trump’s prospective order would deny citizenship to children born in 
the United States to noncitizens. It is especially aimed at undocumented 
immigrants who supposedly pour into the country to have “anchor babies” 
— one of the president’s numerous exaggerations when it

[Marxism] Central America / Mexico / U.S.: Solidarity with the Migrants’ Caravan!

[RKOB via Marxism]

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https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/latin-america/central-america-mexico-u-s-solidarity-with-the-migrants-caravan/

--
Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG
(Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net)
www.rkob.net
ak...@rkob.net
Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314



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[Marxism] A Song In Time Of Revolution. 1860.

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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A Song In Time Of Revolution. 1860.
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

THE HEART of the rulers is sick, and the high-priest covers his head:
For this is the song of the quick that is heard in the ears of the dead.

The poor and the halt and the blind are keen and mighty and fleet:
Like the noise of the blowing of wind is the sound of the noise of their 
feet.


The wind has the sound of a laugh in the clamour of days and of deeds:
The priests are scattered like chaff, and the rulers broken like reeds.

The high-priest sick from qualms, with his raiment bloodily dashed;
The thief with branded palms, and the liar with cheeks abashed.

They are smitten, they tremble greatly, they are pained for their 
pleasant things:
For the house of the priests made stately, and the might in the mouth of 
the kings.


They are grieved and greatly afraid; they are taken, they shall not flee:
For the heart of the nations is made as the strength of the springs of 
the sea.


They were fair in the grace of gold, they walked with delicate feet:
They were clothed with the cunning of old, and the smell of their 
garments was sweet.


For the breaking of gold in their hair they halt as a man made lame:
They are utterly naked and bare; their mouths are bitter with shame.

Wilt thou judge thy people now, O king that wast found most wise?
Wilt thou lie any more, O thou whose mouth is emptied of lies?

Shall God make a pact with thee, till his hook be found in thy sides?
Wilt thou put back the time of the sea, or the place of the season of tides?

Set a word in thy lips, to stand before God with a word in thy mouth;
That “the rain shall return in the land, and the tender dew after drouth.”

But the arm of the elders is broken, their strength is unbound and undone:
They wait for a sign of a token; they cry, and there cometh none.

Their moan is in every place, the cry of them filleth the land:
There is shame in the sight of their face, there is fear in the thews of 
their hand.


They are girdled about the reins with a curse for the girdle thereon:
For the noise of the rending of chains the face of their colour is gone.

For the sound of the shouting of men they are grievously stricken at heart:
They are smitten asunder with pain, their bones are smitten apart.

There is none of them all that is whole; their lips gape open for breath;
They are clothed with sickness of soul, and the shape of the shadow of 
death.


The wind is thwart in their feet; it is full of the shouting of mirth;
As one shaketh the sides of a sheet, so it shaketh the ends of the earth.

The sword, the sword is made keen; the iron has opened its mouth;
The corn is red that was green; it is bound for the sheaves of the south.

The sound of a word was shed, the sound of the wind as a breath,
In the ears of the souls that were dead, in the dust of the deepness of 
death;


Where the face of the moon is taken, the ways of the stars undone,
The light of the whole sky shaken, the light of the face of the sun:

Where the waters are emptied and broken, the waves of the waters are stayed;
Where God has bound for a token the darkness that maketh afraid;

Where the sword was covered and hidden, and dust had grown in its side,
A word came forth which was bidden, the crying of one that cried:

The sides of the two-edged sword shall be bare, and its mouth shall be red,
For the breath of the face of the Lord that is felt in the bones of the 
dead.

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Re: [Marxism] Democrats and Trump

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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Thanks, Mark. 

 

It strikes me that “independent political action” in the US at present comes 
down to a largely ideological action – small sects running candidates in their 
own name hoping to attract some individuals to their “party,” or simply 
commenting from the sidelines. Perhaps that is all that is possible at this 
time, as you may be suggesting. Obviously, in Quebec (not in Canada as a whole, 
unfortunately) we are in a much more favourable position. Québec solidaire is a 
party with a much more developed program than anything you have in the USA, and 
is certainly much more influential than the DSA or any of the sects. 

 

But this is the result of a long process that began about 20 years ago, when 
some survivors of the old Trotskyist and “Marxist-Leninist” (Maoist) groups of 
the 1970s began to get together and discuss how to build a new broad left 
party. Over the next few years they reached broad agreement to put aside old 
doctrinal differences of 20th century socialism and to focus on a few key 
programmatic themes: feminism, left pluralism, opposition to global 
imperialism, and, not least, in the Quebec context support for Quebec national 
independence from the Canadian state (an intellectually liberating concept as 
it freed their thinking from the restrictions imposed by the existing 
constitutional division of powers). This could not have occurred until the 
dominant pro-independence party, the Parti québécois (PQ), had become widely 
discredited as a result of its implementation of capitalist austerity while in 
government and its failure to win majority support for independence in the 1995 
referendum.

 

Crucially, the regroupment process sought ways to build alliances with the 
existing social movements, especially the women’s movement (still relatively 
strong at that time in Quebec, where the world march of women began) and the 
“altermondialiste” (global justice) movement. More recently the fight against 
climate change has become a dominant theme.

 

Then they began a few electoralist experiments – a candidacy against the PQ 
prime minister, in which their candidate (Michel Chartrand, an old 
social-democratic leader) got about 18% of the vote, and most successfully in 
2001 in a Montréal by-election where their candidate (a leader of a short-lived 
municipal workers party in the early 1970s) got 24% of the vote. This led to 
the formation of a “union of progressive forces” (UFP) in 1972, followed in 
1976 by a merger with a coalition of feminist and community-oriented social 
movements to form Québec solidaire. 

 

Since then QS has sought to operate as both “a party of the ballot-boxes and 
the streets” (the expression first popularized in France by the Ligue 
communiste révolutionnaire), although there is a strong pull toward electoral 
action as the priority. The party’s elected members see themselves as 
parliamentary spokespersons for the social movements, but QS still has to 
define more clearly how to work in conjunction with the broader social 
movements.

 

There is much more to be said, of course, and I have tried over the years to 
document and analyze this process for a non-Quebec English-speaking left 
audience. But I often wonder if a somewhat analogous process might be possible 
south of the border. You certainly have many mass protest movements, but as you 
say they tend to be one-off single-issue and “punctual” efforts, without 
sustained existence. However, the recent rapid growth of the DSA suggests there 
is an appetite for something more permanent and positive, even if its 
“socialism” is largely undefined. You also have an intellectually productive 
left judging from the materials often referenced on Marxmail (Counterpunch, 
Truthout, etc.) and of course the remnants of some 20th century sects such as 
the ISO or Against the Current. So far you lack (as do we in English Canada) 
some agglutinizing influence that could initiate a broader regroupment process. 
In Quebec this existed largely because of the Québécois national question and 
its radicalizing influence on young people. (This was completely misunderstood 
by the sole article Jacobin published on the recent Quebec election campaign.)

 

I’ll leave it there, for now. But as I say I think there is much the US (and 
Anglo-Canadian) left could learn from the Quebec experience. The language 
difference complicates this, of course. But that can be overcome with a little 
effort.

 

Richard

 

From: Mark Lause [mailto:markala...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 10:07 PM
To: Richard Fidler; Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Democrats a

[Marxism] What Thucydides Knew About the US Today | by Edward Mendelson | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/10/29/what-thucydides-knew-about-the-us-today/
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[Marxism] The Texas Rangers: Good Guys No More - Los Angeles Review of Books

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-texas-rangers-good-guys-no-more/
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[Marxism] How Long-Term Economic Distress Motivated Trump Voters

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://theintercept.com/2018/10/31/donald-trump-2016-election-economic-distress/
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[Marxism] Catabolism: Capitalism’s Frightening Future

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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In a growth-less, contracting economy, the profit motive can have a 
powerful catabolic impact on capitalist society. The word “catabolism” 
comes from the Greek and is used in biology to refer to the condition 
whereby a living thing feeds on itself. Thus, catabolic capitalism is a 
self-cannibalizing system whose insatiable hunger for profit can only be 
fed by devouring the society that sustains it.[2]As it rampages down the 
road to ruin, this system gorges itself on one self-inflicted disaster 
after another.


The riotous train scene in the film The Marx Brothers Go West captures 
the essence of catabolic capitalism. The wacky brothers commandeer a 
locomotive that runs out of fuel. In desperation, they ransack the 
train, breaking up the passenger cars, ripping up seats and tearing down 
roofs and walls to feed the steam engine. By the end of the scene, 
terrified passengers desperately cling to a skeletal train, reduced to 
little more than a fast moving furnace on wheels.


full: 
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/01/catabolism-capitalisms-frightening-future/

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[Marxism] Make China Marxist Again | Dissent Magazine

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/making-china-marxist-again-xi-jinping-thought
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[Marxism] Do not Disturb!: The Syrian Revolution

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Open letter to Roger Waters.

https://www.allianceofmesocialists.org/do-not-disturb-the-syrian-revolution-the-left-of-the-global-north/
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[Marxism] Frederick Douglass’s 19th Century | The Nation

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Eric Foner reviews new bio.

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-double-battle/
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[Marxism] The Long, Ugly History of American Antisemitism

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/01/the-long-ugly-history-of-american-antisemitism/
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[Marxism] bellingcat - How the MAGAbomber and the Synagogue Shooter Were Likely Radicalized - bellingcat

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/31/magabomber-synagogue-shooter-likely-radicalized/
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