[Marxism] Amira Hass on Israeli-Jewish dissidence today

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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She began by saying she’s thinking of writing  a column titled ‘A Guide for
a Perplexed Alien’. An alien arriving in Israel would struggle to tell who
is an Israeli and who is a Palestinian, they both look alike, she said.  If
you want to know who is who: “Wherever it is green” it is Israel. “Wherever
it is grey it is Palestinian. Wherever there is [space for] strolling it is
Israel, wherever it is densely populated it is Palestinian. It is an urban
topography that has a philosophy”. . .

https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/amira-hass-israeli-jewish-dissidence-in-times-of-bantustanisation/


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[Marxism] Myths about Israel

[Philip Ferguson via Marxism]

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"This deceptively slim book covers a lot of ground. The author, Ilan Pappe,
is a well-known expatriate Israeli historian, critic and social activist.
He is one of the ‘new historians’ arising in Israel who have challenged the
official Zionist version of Israel’s history.  As the name suggests Ten
Myths is divided into sections which saves it from becoming a heavy
treatise on the making of Israel.

"Pappe takes apart the myth of . . ."

full at: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/20135/




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Re: [Marxism] a protest

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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 (trying again . . .. .)

As in 2016, the results pose the question as to whether Donald Trump is a
political genius or the Democrats function rather like the Three Stooges
trying to build a house.  I know which option makes the most sense to me.

By all accounts on the ground, the Democrats did few of the things they
needed to do to maximize the outcome.  In Texas, where Latino votes were
key, the party did nothing to organize transportation for people to get to
the polls.  That used to be the bare minimum the organization would do.
Various organizations here and there have tried to pick up the slack--the
NAACP here, for example, but the results have been spotty.

This really reflects the transformation of political parties in the U.S.
which have come to function mostly as fund-raising organs that funnel money
into television advertising.  Look at how some of the Democratic candidates
like Stacey Abrams, Beto O'Rourke, and Andrew Gillum have earned a
reputation as exceptionally charismatic, etc.  What makes them  stand out
from the others seems to be their ability to actually stand up and talk to
other sentient human beings.  A commentary on the state of political
affairs here.

(btw, Ted Cruz has just been declared the winner in Texas, assuring
Republican control of the U.S. Senate.)

Cheers,
Mark L.
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[Marxism] A socialist campaign to shake up West Virginia | SocialistWorker.org

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://socialistworker.org/2018/09/10/a-socialist-campaign-to-shake-up-west-virginia
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[Marxism] a protest

[Gary MacLennan via Marxism]

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I am watching the results come in from the East Coast, currently the
Republicans are ahead in the 60 seats that have been called. I want to run
around and scream in protest against being in a position where I am hoping
for the Democrats to save us. I despise the Democrats with every fiber of
my being. I totally endorse every single word of Richard Seymour's
criticism of them and their overweening arrogance and stupidity.

But here we are- Waiting for Pelosi. Jeezuss and his holy mother help us.

comradely

Gary
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[Marxism] Thoughts on the US mid-terms | Richard Seymour on Patreon

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.patreon.com/posts/thoughts-on-us-22551117
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[Marxism] Prof. Kees van der Pijl, Author at Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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This is another sign of van der Pijl's degradation, 5 articles written 
*exclusively* for Global Research. They are all oafish attempts to blame 
Kyiv for the downing of flight MH17 accompanied by invitations to read 
his book "Flight MH17, Ukraine and the New Cold War. Prism of Disaster" 
You can get a flavor from one of them at 
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-downing-of-malaysian-airlines-flight-mh17-and-the-new-cold-war-with-russia/5638505:


"Recent events, such as the alleged gas incident in Douma (Syria), the 
assault of father and daughter Skripal in Salisbury, as well as the 
accusations of systematic doping of Russian athletes, confirm one of the 
book’s basic conclusions: Moscow is being accused of misdeeds of all 
kinds and subjected to sanctions before any serious investigation has 
occurred to establish its culpability."


This is the sort of thing you'd expect to see on Global Research but why 
would a highly respected Marxist intellectual stoop that low unless 
Marxism has given way to conspiracism? I guess I know the answer. This 
stuff is highly seductive. As my friends in LA used to tell me, if I 
moved out there I could leave my brain behind.

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[Marxism] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Colbert's "Our Cartoon President"

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25mArQYdnjg=3=PLZ8c54cxQG2Er3jT_VcduPQWzeNMvvrzl
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[Marxism] Rick Kunh on Brazil.

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Good, brief summary of what happened.

https://redflag.org.au/node/6602
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[Marxism] Capitalist Ju$tice vs. A Socialist World

[bonnieweinstein via Marxism]

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Capitalist Ju$tice vs. A Socialist World
By Bonnie Weinstein
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org

“Thinking outside the box” is a popular metaphor that means, “to think 
differently—from a different or new perspective.” It’s meant to encourage 
creative thinking—to find new or different ways to solve problems. 

But when it comes to the rationalization and justification of capitalism by the 
capitalist class, there is no “outside” of the box. 

When it comes to war, the capitalists say, “there has always been war—it’s 
human nature to be war-like.” When it comes to economic inequality they say, 
“there has always been a wealthy minority in power over the masses—the wealthy 
are on top because they are smarter, better, stronger. The poor are poor 
because they are inferior.” 

This is social Darwinism and it is beat into our heads from the time we are 
born. We are taught to believe that this is the way it is, has always been, and 
will always be. It’s what justifies Manifest Destiny, slavery and 
imperialism—the “great white hope” that is meant to “tame and/or slaughter the 
savages” and establish “civilization,”—i.e., white domination by force of 
violence. 

Capitalist Ju$tice is determined by income inequality
You may have noticed that the wealthy rarely go to jail and almost never get 
the death penalty or life without parole—these punishments are for the masses. 
Not for the capitalists.

In an August 31, 2018 New York Times article by Robert H. Frank titled, “How 
Rising Inequality Has Widened the Justice Gap,” the author states:

“Rising inequality has harmed low-income families not only by depriving them of 
a fair share of society’s income growth, but also in a more specific way: It 
has stacked the legal system even more heavily against them. According to a 
recent survey, more than 70 percent 
 of 
low-income American households had been involved in eviction cases, labor law 
cases, and other civil legal disputes during the preceding year, and in more 
than 80 percent 
 of 
those cases they lacked effective legal representation.”

That’s because in a capitalist society like ours it takes money to have 
adequate legal representation—just as it takes money to eat, have a home, 
clothes, medical care, education.

The article goes on: 

“Many top earners are not only talented and hardworking, but they are also 
lucky to have grown up in privileged circumstances. And it is one thing to say 
that someone who is ten percent more skillful should be paid ten percent more. 
But in today’s winner-take-all marketplace, those who are only one percent more 
talented often earn thousands-of-times more. These observations are difficult 
to square with anyone’s conception of a just society.”

This is because capitalism—by its very structure—is designed to protect the 
privileges of the wealthy by any means necessary. That is the purpose of the 
courts, the police and the military. After all, workers are talented and 
hardworking too, but we are not adequately compensated for it.

The economic structure of capitalism and the laws created and enforced by 
capitalists are all designed to allow the wealthy to accumulate the profits 
that the working masses produce. 

Workers are only compensated for our labor by what we demand and can win 
through cooperative actions such mass demonstrations, union organizing and 
strikes. As revolutionary socialist James P. Cannon once put it, “The ethic of 
capitalism is: ‘From each whatever you can get out of him—to each whatever he 
can grab.’”1

Even the so-called democratic electoral system is rigged in favor of the 
wealthy. It’s a system that allows working people to vote for one wealthy 
representative of the capitalist class over another. We do not get to vote on 
laws, or who sits on the Supreme Court. We have no say over the cost of credit 
card interest rates, gas and electric rates, education, food or housing, etc. 
We have no say over the costs to us, of any of the basic necessities of life. 

Capitalism is democracy for the wealthy and dictatorship over the working 
class. 

Capitalist pillaging and destruction of the world
Capitalism is a stage of social evolution that has outlived its usefulness. It 
destroys the world in order to increase private profits for the wealthy. 

The gap between the rich and the poor has grown astronomically in the last few 
decades. Not just in the United States but all over the world. And it is 
reinforced by massive military interventions—led by the United States and its 

[Marxism] From social democracy to fascism: how Bolsonaro took Brazil | Red Flag

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Good summary of what happened in Brazil.

https://redflag.org.au/node/6602
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Re: [Marxism] Sussex Uni professor tweets ‘Israelis blew up Twin Towers’

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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I'm suspicious of the idea of that students as a group can be brainwashed
by anybody.  In fact, I don't think that brains can generally be washed.
:-)  Not even with Purell.
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Re: [Marxism] Sussex Uni professor tweets ‘Israelis blew up Twin Towers’

[MM via Marxism]

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> On Nov 6, 2018, at 10:34 AM, Patrick Bond via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> Yikes. In past years we could count on van der Pijl for solid structuralism, 
> even when thinking through agency, such as in/The Making of an Atlantic 
> Ruling Class /(Verso 1984)/... /or in helping me understand Alex Jones' 
> Bilderbergphobia: https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/bilderbergers-beware 
> 


I don’t understand the following paragraph in this piece, especially the second 
sentence from “… can be subsumed…”:

"Such elite networks are, Antonio Gramsci wrote in The Prison Notebooks, like 
“international political parties which operate within each nation with the full 
concentration of the international forces. But religion, Freemasonry, Rotary, 
Jews, etc., can be subsumed into the social category of ‘intellectuals’, whose 
function, on an international scale, is that of mediating the extremes, of 
‘socializing’ the technical discoveries which provide the impetus for all 
activities of leadership, of devising compromises between, and ways out of, 
extreme solutions.””

Can someone explain a bit more what Gramsci means here?

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Re: [Marxism] Sussex Uni professor tweets ‘Israelis blew up Twin Towers’

[Ismail Lagardien via Marxism]

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Trust me, I know "distinguished professors" who are conspiratorial, unabashed 
propagandists, pamphleteers, who brainwash students and who force through 
doctorates for pure political expediency and gain. 
I am not an academic, but I notice that "the best" and the "most prolific" 
among them have had two or three good ideas over the last 20 years and rehash 
them for different publications so often they are boring and predictable.
... and they get paid well, fly around the world for performance activism. 



Dr Ismail LagardienVisiting ProfessorWits University School of Governance

Nihil humani a me alienum puto
 

On Tuesday, 6 November 2018, 19:15:38 GMT+2, A.R. G via Marxism 
 wrote:  
 
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Oh wow. I think you have to recognize that people are not perfect and that
in the Twitter age you see every stupid thought someone has as opposed to
only their magnum opus. I recall Richard Falk dabbling in these kinds of
theories as well.

Of course, there is nothing inherently crazy about accusing the Israeli
government (or any government) of using its covert agents to do crazy
things (if not 9/11, certainly other terrible acts), but one would hope
such a bold and outrageous claim would come with some bulletproof evidence
instead of an online waste receptacle.

Amith R. Gupta
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[Marxism] Diluted "Resistance" - this is how Obama campaigned for a supporter of Trump's wall

[Dennis Brasky via Marxism]

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clip -

> During the same weeks when Trump piled one anti-immigrant atrocity on top
> of another, the leaders of the “party of the people” were determined not
> to say anything about it
> .
>
> House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had the same infuriating message of
> evasion
> 
>  last
> weekend that she’s repeated for months. Rather than let voters “think the
> Democrats are all about impeachment, investigation, caravans, ‘scaravans,’”
> Pelosi recommended: “Don’t take the bait, just stick with health care,
> good-paying jobs and clean government.”
>
> Let’s go back to Obama and the issue of immigration. In 2008, the
> immigrant rights movement was only two years away from an amazing high
> point
> 
>  that
> really did achieve a victory. The mega-marches and “day without an
> immigrant” strikes of 2006 stopped reactionary Republican legislation that
> would have criminalized all of the undocumented in the U.S.
>
> But under Obama, the same liberal forces that helped organize the 2006
> upsurge were far quieter, hoping that they could work with their supposed
> ally in the White House. Calls to protest Obama’s lack of action were met
> with warnings that being too radical would hand the Republicans an issue to
> hammer the Democrats with.
>
> And so Barack Obama became the deporter-in-chief without facing mass
> opposition on the scale of 2006 — and the promise of any reform, even with
> the twisted compromises that the Democrats insisted on, went unfulfilled.
>
>
> https://socialistworker.org/2018/11/06/the-democratic-party-doesnt-deserve-your-vote
>
>
>
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Re: [Marxism] Sussex Uni professor tweets ‘Israelis blew up Twin Towers’

[A.R. G via Marxism]

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Oh wow. I think you have to recognize that people are not perfect and that
in the Twitter age you see every stupid thought someone has as opposed to
only their magnum opus. I recall Richard Falk dabbling in these kinds of
theories as well.

Of course, there is nothing inherently crazy about accusing the Israeli
government (or any government) of using its covert agents to do crazy
things (if not 9/11, certainly other terrible acts), but one would hope
such a bold and outrageous claim would come with some bulletproof evidence
instead of an online waste receptacle.

Amith R. Gupta
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[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] The Meatball Factor: Fate of Nation May Hinge on Rhode Island Governor’s Race | Washington Babylon

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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http://secure-web.cisco.com/1hXLjEjzVQQupTTCzEpeCYtNdxoVUgrMxuLbAB8s9Z5nSgTBent-sw4X5AXtlqVWSVTe8-Z-bvhDlROYsOrZlEASQiANsT6DHp8ey5EyVIcrIpuDsR26tT1pC6rY2MitOIkb6VOCxOWWl0BuzI9fHu4xXZgbfj1bYe4m6TPDqA9kvw8LflFSOw1KtCWM-TtdDIel7ZE2hj37104IVPtl5XT_n5eTLoltK8KTyZn3q-2OCf2ejeDBSRyNwexuWZX9r9x7CUSRYDiJZMobOcIMAMXXmpoFFFw4GNEXuelVlHRhZpQ4mHu3-en_jVCKVv1PMs7bmRIZHa-mI08vqHVXTEIxLSyTMvbk3-dtNTP8IGMSlOOXDiJOG8u69tT9GinT1ETv0aL78rft32lu5CGbbvw/http%3A%2F%2Fwashingtonbabylon.com%2Frhode-island-2018-pivotal%2F


Best regards,
Andrew Stewart 


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[Marxism] Google Workers Reject Silicon Valley Individualism in Walkout

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Nov. 6, 2018
Google Workers Reject Silicon Valley Individualism in Walkout
By Noam Scheiber

The most remarkable aspect of the walkout at Google last week may not 
have been that an estimated 20,000 people participated or that it had 
global reach, or even that it came together in less than a week. It was 
the way the organizers identified their action with a broader worker 
struggle, using language almost unheard-of among affluent tech employees.


“This is part of a growing movement,” the organizers wrote in a news 
release, “not just in tech, but across the country, including teachers, 
fast-food workers and others who are using their strength in numbers to 
make real change.”


At the beginning of their protest near the company’s San Francisco 
offices, the organizers even expressed support for Marriott workers on 
strike in the city.


For decades, Silicon Valley has been ground zero for a vaguely utopian 
form of individualism — the idea that a single engineer with a laptop 
and an internet connection could change the world, or at least a 
long-established industry. Class-consciousness was passé. Unions were 
the enemy of innovation, an anchor to the status quo.


But the issues that provoked the walkout at Google — the company’s 
controversial work with the Pentagon on artificial intelligence, its 
apparent willingness to build a censored search engine for China, and 
above all its handling of sexual harassment accusations against senior 
managers — proved too large for any one worker to confront alone, even 
if that worker made mid-six figures. They required a form of solidarity 
that would be recognizable to the most militant 20th century labor 
organizers.


“The myth of Silicon Valley is that all the power you need is embodied 
in you as an individual — if you want more money, go somewhere else,” 
said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California, 
Berkeley. “What they were saying here was that all the economic power 
they had as individuals wasn’t enough.”


And the consequences of that dawning realization, Mr. Shaiken and other 
labor experts said, could reverberate across the entire tech sector.


Tech executives have long maintained that unions are inefficient — the 
Intel co-founder Robert Noyce once described unions as an existential 
threat — and that skilled tech workers don’t need formal protections 
because employers can’t afford to alienate them. Many tech companies 
also promote themselves as inherently pro-worker because they are less 
hierarchical, and more democratically run, than old-economy businesses.


Google, for example, points to countless ways for workers to communicate 
with senior executives: Employees can raise a concern with the chief 
executive at a TGIF meeting that happens a few times each month. They 
can ask questions on an internal company platform before meetings, and 
management will respond to the ones that receive the most “up-votes.” 
Workers can even circulate petitions, and those that prove especially 
popular can earn their authors a sit-down with management.


Underlying the back-and-forth is the belief that truth bubbles up from 
an unregulated exchange of ideas. But some employees complain that it 
rarely leads to lasting change.


“As far as mechanisms for expressing feelings, there are plenty of 
them,” said Meredith Whittaker, a 12-year Google veteran who oversees a 
research group at the company and helped organize the walkout. “But as 
far as opportunities for agency and power — for real power over 
decision-making — some of what you’re seeing is a recognition that the 
former doesn’t equal the latter.”


When The New York Times reported in late October that Google had given a 
high-ranking official a $90 million payout as he left the company after 
allegations of sexual harassment, organizers said, it ignited these 
simmering frustrations.


Though unusual, there is precedent for well-paid, in-demand workers 
standing up to their employers.


In 2014, managers and executives joined rank-and-file workers in a 
weekslong protest at Market Basket, a low-priced grocery store chain 
based in New England.


The workers, joined by customers who boycotted the store, worried that 
the ouster of the company’s beloved chief executive, Arthur T. Demoulas, 
would undo its practice of paying generous wages and benefits and 
turning a profit through high productivity. The protest ended when a 
group including Mr. Demoulas struck a deal to buy the portion of the 
company they did not own. Thomas A. Kochan, a management professor at 
M.I.T., has called it the most successful strike of this century.


Two generations 

Re: [Marxism] Sussex Uni professor tweets ‘Israelis blew up Twin Towers’

[Patrick Bond via Marxism]

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On 2018/11/06 17:06, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
https://thetab.com/uk/sussex/2018/11/05/sussex-uni-investigates-after-professor-tweets-israelis-blew-up-twin-towers-30917 



Yikes. In past years we could count on van der Pijl for solid 
structuralism, even when thinking through agency, such as in/The Making 
of an Atlantic Ruling Class /(Verso 1984)/... /or in helping me 
understand Alex Jones' Bilderbergphobia: 
https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/bilderbergers-beware


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[Marxism] What America Owes Frederick Douglass

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times Op-Ed, Nov. 6, 2018
What America Owes Frederick Douglass
He said black people had three tools: their voice, their pen and their 
vote. Today all three are under threat.

By David W. Blight

(Mr. Blight is a professor of history at Yale and the author, most 
recently, of “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.”)


In the introduction to Frederick Douglass’s second autobiography, “My 
Bondage and My Freedom,” published in 1855, his friend James McCune 
Smith wrote that if a stranger landed in the United States and sought 
out its most prominent men by using newspapers and telegraph messages, 
he would discover Douglass. Born a slave in Maryland, Douglass had 
escaped to the North to become a renowned abolitionist orator and 
writer. He was, Smith said, the sort of person people would ask, “‘Tell 
me your thought!’ And somehow or other, revolution seemed to follow in 
his wake.”


When he started his career, Douglass eschewed politics in favor of 
changing hearts and minds through moral suasion. But in the decade 
before the Civil War, he had become a thoroughgoing political 
abolitionist, a believer that slavery could be destroyed only through 
power politics.


At the end of the memoir, Douglass admitted that he had, until recently, 
fought only with “pen and tongue.” But now, in the roiling crises over 
slavery in the 1850s — fugitive slave rescues, violent clashes in Kansas 
over slavery’s expansion and a nation enthralled by the antislavery 
novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” — the author announced his new “disposition.” 
He had discovered the force of politics in a republic dominated by 
slavery. He wished to add his own story to the nation’s “blood-written 
history” as clouds of “wrathful thunder and lightning” hovered over the 
land. Then he gave voice to his life’s work. He would, as long as 
“heaven” gave him the ability to speak and to write, fight for abolition 
and the beginning of black equality with “my voice, my pen, or my vote.”


So much of Douglass’s life echoes down through American history, but 
especially this week, perhaps nothing more so than those words. All 
those Americans voting across our country right now, and especially 
those whose votes are thwarted by people who still refuse to accept 
historical verdicts a century and a half old, owe Douglass a nod of 
recognition.


In 1866-67, the United States had no obvious path ahead in the wake of 
the Civil War. A people — North and South, black and white, still 
mourning 700,000 dead — faced elections without clearly defined rules 
about who could vote. Nearly four million former slaves, many living in 
physical hardship and under the threat of terror and violence in the 
South, did not yet know what “freedom” would mean, nor what kind of 
civil and political rights they might exercise.


Americans ached to be put back together in some new, reimagined way. 
Hundreds of thousands had fled their homes during the war. The nation’s 
politics was shredded into blood-born hatreds and seemingly hopeless 
polarization. Its national and state governments had to be remade. 
Racism, fear and hope all marched together as traumatized soldiers from 
both sides made their way home to farms in a thriving Northern economy 
but an utterly devastated South.


The party in power in Washington was led by a group of visionaries, the 
“radical” Republicans who had championed the cause of emancipation 
during the war and believed in an interventionist federal government as 
a means of fashioning a second American republic out of the destruction 
of the first. They imagined at least the beginning of a revolution in 
racial equality. The war was over, but everything still seemed at stake 
in the struggle over Reconstruction. Whether free exercise of voice, pen 
and vote would really be protected for all remained to be seen.


The president was Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean who had been invited onto 
Abraham Lincoln’s ticket in 1864 because he had been the sole senator 
from a Confederate state who did not secede with it. Johnson’s support 
of the Union notwithstanding, he was a staunch proponent of states’ 
rights, a virulent white supremacist and a believer in limited federal 
government. Johnson grudgingly accepted the end of slavery but denounced 
the extension of civil and political liberty to black Americans. His 
spirit lives on today, in more subtle ways, in the voter suppression 
practices of the Republican Party and in the desire to revoke birthright 
citizenship.


As Johnson and the radical Republicans locked horns over fundamentally 
different visions of Reconstruction in the winter of 1866, Douglass led 
a delegation of 12 black 

[Marxism] Senior Citizens Are Replacing Teenagers as Fast-Food Workers - Bloomberg

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Amid a tight U.S. labor market, restaurant chains are recruiting at 
churches, senior centers and AARP.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-05/senior-citizens-are-replacing-teenagers-at-fast-food-joints
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[Marxism] Sussex Uni professor tweets ‘Israelis blew up Twin Towers’

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Kees van der Pijl, the 71 year old professor emeritus who wrote the 
highly regarded "The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class", appears to 
have developed cognitive issues. If you ever catch me spouting nonsense, 
please send a note to my wife instructing her to replace my Macbook with 
a needlepoint kit.


https://thetab.com/uk/sussex/2018/11/05/sussex-uni-investigates-after-professor-tweets-israelis-blew-up-twin-towers-30917
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[Marxism] FYI - More On DSA Candidates In The Midterm Elections

[William Quimby via Marxism]

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Comrades interested in the progress (or non-progress) of the DSA might 
want to glance at this

recent item in the Washington Post.

"Socialist candidates appear on this year’s ballot for Advisory 
Neighborhood Commission seats in
five of the District’s eight wards. It’s the largest election push by 
the Democratic Socialists of

America in any city in the country."

“Two years from now, we’re going to run a whole lot more people,” said 
Matthew Sampson, 27,
a DSA organizer and graduate student at Georgetown University running 
unopposed for an ANC
seat representing the Dupont Circle neighborhood. “We want to show our 
neighbors that socialists
are not people to be afraid of. We’re people who want to push for change 
from the bottom up

instead of the top down.”



- Bill


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[Marxism] One Legacy of Merkel? Angry East German Men Fueling the Far Right

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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NY Times, Nov. 6, 2018
One Legacy of Merkel? Angry East German Men Fueling the Far Right
By Katrin Bennhold

EBERSBACH-NEUGERSDORF, Germany — Frank Dehmel was on the streets of East 
Germany in 1989. Every Monday, he marched against the Communist regime, 
demanding freedom and democracy and chanting with the crowds: “We are 
the people!”


Three decades later, Mr. Dehmel is on the streets again, older and 
angrier, and chanting the same slogan — this time for the far right.


He won freedom and democracy when the Berlin Wall came down 29 years ago 
on Nov. 9. But he lost everything else: His job, his status, his country 
— and his wife. Like so many eastern women, she went west to look for 
work and never came back.


To understand why the far right is on the march again in Germany, it 
helps to understand the many grievances of its most loyal supporters: 
men in the former Communist East.


The emergence of Eastern Man as a disruptive political force stands as a 
prime legacy of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 13 years in power. As she 
prepared Germans last week for her eventual political exit, some noted 
that, politically at least, her Germany was more divided between East 
and West than at any point since reunification.


No doubt the far right has made gains across Germany. The Alternative 
for Germany, or AfD, won 13 percent of votes in last year’s elections, 
enough to make it the leading opposition voice in Parliament. It is now 
represented in every one of the country’s 16 state legislatures.


But support for the AfD in the East is on average more than double that 
in the West. Among eastern men, the party is the strongest political 
force, with 28 percent having cast their ballots for the AfD last year.


Eastern Man, a figure long patronized, pitied or just ignored in the 
West, is in the process of again reshaping German politics.


No one more embodies the frustrations of eastern men — or has been more 
the object of their ire — than Ms. Merkel, an eastern woman who rose to 
the pinnacle of power and provides a daily reminder of their own failure.


Yet Ms. Merkel never became the ambassador for the East that people 
yearned for: Living standards in the region still lag those in the West, 
even after what is perceived as a traumatic economic takeover.


Mr. Dehmel calls her a “traitor” and worse.

After reunification, Mr. Dehmel recalled, western men in suits and 
Mercedes-Benzes arrived in his eastern home state of Saxony, soon 
running businesses, running universities, running the regional 
government, “running everything.”


And that was before more than a million asylum seekers, many of them 
young men, came to Germany in 2015.


“I didn’t risk my skin back then to become a third-class citizen,” said 
Mr. Dehmel, now 57, counting off the perceived hierarchy on his fingers: 
“First there are western Germans, then there are asylum seekers, then 
it’s us.”


One-third of male voters in Saxony, where he lives, cast their ballots 
for the far right last year — by far more than any other place in the 
country.


“We have a crisis of masculinity in the East and it is feeding the far 
right,” said Petra Köpping, minister for integration in Saxony.


When Ms. Köpping took office in 2014, she thought her job was to 
integrate immigrants. But as hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers 
began arriving in Germany a year later, a middle-aged white man heckled 
her at a town-hall-style meeting.


“Why don’t you integrate us first?” the man had shouted.

That question, which has since become the title of a book written by Ms. 
Köpping, prompted her to tour her eastern home state and interview 
dozens of angry men. The disappointed hopes and humiliations of 1989, 
she found, still fester.


Some three million jobs, most of them in traditionally male industries, 
were lost over two years. The working-class heroes of Socialism became 
the working-class losers of capitalism.


East German men were abandoned by their newly united country practically 
overnight, Ms. Köpping said: “They are the original left-behinds.”


And they were quite literally left behind — by the women.

Long before the #MeToo movement, Communism succeeded in creating a broad 
class of women who were independent, emancipated, often better educated 
and working in more adaptable service jobs than eastern men.


After the wall came down, the East lost more than 10 percent of its 
population. Two-thirds of those who left and did not come back were 
young women.


It was the most extreme case of female flight in Europe, said Reiner 
Klingholz, director of the Berlin Institute for Population and 
Development, who has studied the 

[Marxism] We Need a Socialist Caucus in Congress

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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(When I was Sunkara's age, I was--foolishly--thinking that I'd be living 
in a socialist America. Maybe not in 5 years but at least in 10. His 
dream is a socialist caucus that can operate as a faction of the DP, 
keeping in mind that this "socialism" is nothing but New Deal 
liberalism. Talk about diminished expectations.)


Now, imagine it’s 2023 and we have democratic socialist caucuses in 
Congress and state legislatures, where like-minded electeds are 
organized. They agree to a broad set of principles, associate themselves 
with a network of activist organizations and labor unions, and only take 
money from working-class organizations and individual small donors. 
Within individual legislatures they maintain a degree of coherence — 
free votes on many items, but bloc voting on key programmatic issues 
like opposing wars or budget cuts.


https://jacobinmag.com/2018/11/democratic-socialist-caucus-congress-elections-ocasio-cortez-bernie
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[Marxism] Border Jumpers: Afropean Itineraries | The Brooklyn Rail

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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It is the hardening of border restrictions that has transformed normal 
smuggling into powerful networks of traffickers. A hideous mirror of 
migration policy, the traffickers are amassing colossal fortunes on the 
backs of the migrants. The militias who are now dividing up Libyan 
territory have taken over the cynical game of subcontracting the control 
of European borders for hard cash and diplomatic recognition that 
Gaddafi practiced with brio (“If you don’t pay, I will open the gates 
and tomorrow Europe will be black,” the Libyan dictator declared during 
an official visit to Italy). This situation, with its slave markets and 
forced filling up of boats doomed to shipwreck, would be enough to bring 
Sarkozy and Bernard-Henri Lévy before an international criminal court, 
if the Hague was not reserved for African kinglets and former Serbian 
warlords.


https://brooklynrail.org/2018/11/field-notes/Border-Jumpers-Afropean-Itineraries
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[Marxism] Tapping into the unrealized futures of the past: QUINN SLOBODIAN with Pavlos Roufos | The Brooklyn Rail

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Quinn Slobodian’s recent book Globalists: The End of Empire and the 
Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard University Press, 2018) is a brilliant 
exposition of the widely contested concept of “neoliberalism.” Slobodian 
situates the concept in its historical context, urging a reconsideration 
of the term on both those who reject its significance and those who 
continue to misuse it. I met Quinn in Berlin this July for a 
conversation concerning neoliberalism, its contemporary populist 
offshoots, and other current developments.


https://brooklynrail.org/2018/11/field-notes/Tapping-into-the-unrealized-futures-of-the-past-QUINN-SLOBODIAN-with-Pavlos-Roufos
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[Marxism] Beyond the Green New Deal | The Brooklyn Rail

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://brooklynrail.org/2018/11/field-notes/Beyond-the-Green-New-Deal
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[Marxism] Romanian Agriculture and its Discontents: Its Social Importance, Its Economic Insignificance | Lefteast

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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According to the Eurostat statistics for 2016, one third of all farms in 
the EU can be found in Romania- roughly 3,600 thousand agricultural 
holdings. Similarly, the country boasts the largest share of labor force 
employed in agriculture in the EU, a staggering 26% of the population 
working in the sector, way beyond any possible European average. By 
contrast, France features a puny 2.14 %, Croatia, 9.16 %, and Poland 
11.5 %. Even compared with non-EU European countries, the figures are 
outstanding: only 6.71 % of Russia’s labor force is employed in 
agriculture, and 9.7 % in Belarus.  Whether on a full-time or a 
part-time basis, the Romanian farm labor force comprised 6 577 930 
persons in 2013. Basically, one in every three Romanians was engaged in 
agriculture one way or another. This also means that more than a quarter 
of all agricultural laborers in the entire EU were working in Romania at 
that time, 29.6 %. These impressive numbers leave aside, of course, the 
number of Romanian immigrants working on farms in Italy or Spain. The 
massive social importance of agriculture in a country where more than 53 
% of all population lives in predominantly rural areas and one in every 
three persons works on a farm at same point in their lives is clear. And 
there are reasons to worry.


full: 
http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/romanian-agriculture-and-its-discontents-social-importance-economic-insignificance/

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